


Pater Noster

by SilentAuror



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Case Fic, Cold Case - Freeform, John in Denial, M/M, POV Sherlock Holmes, POV Third Person, Unrequited Love, family trauma, series 3 fix-it, set during HLV and after, sibling relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-30
Updated: 2014-07-30
Packaged: 2018-02-11 02:54:11
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 34,256
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2050848
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SilentAuror/pseuds/SilentAuror
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>During the autumn that John is staying at Baker Street again after Sherlock was shot, he ruminates over the similarity between Sherlock's shot and the one that killed his father when he was fifteen. Cold case meets series 3 fix-it. Part I takes place entirely within <i>His Last Vow</i>, Part II takes place starting at the end of HLV and continues after.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Pater Noster**

**Part I**

John is restless. 

Observing him discreetly, Sherlock determines that the restlessness stems from his current situation, his indecision, and the fact that he is too emotionally incapable to be able to process the circumstances in which he finds himself at the moment. This has already been true for the past seven weeks, the length of time since John learned the truth about Mary. There’s something else bothering him as well, though, and Sherlock has been privately debating for weeks whether or not to bring it up, and if so, how. 

They’ve been here since he was released from the hospital four days ago. John had brusquely insisted that Sherlock could heal at home, that he would be there to look after him, change his dressings, administer morphine as needed. The supervising physician hadn’t been particularly happy, but John had been insistent and Sherlock wanted to go home. So they’re here, and so far John has shown no signs of wanting to leave. Has said nothing whatsoever about going back to the flat (Sherlock refuses to call it “home”; this is John’s home). He’s been watching for signs, listening for cues that John will decide to go – any mention of it whatsoever. _When you’re better, then I’ll…_ or _By the end of the month you should be fine, and then…_ So far nothing. 

John sighs and his socked feet rub at each other the way they do when he’s thinking about something that’s bothering him. The lines between his eyes are particularly deep tonight, Sherlock thinks critically. It’s only early September but the evening is cold. 

Finally he decides to ask. “What are you thinking about?” He keeps his voice low, the tone as non-invasive as possible. 

John’s eyes flick up to his as though startled that he broke the silence. He shifts, resting his jaw on his right hand instead of his left now. “I’m thinking about your shot, actually,” he says. 

Sherlock wasn’t actually expecting him to answer so straightforwardly. He blinks. “What are you thinking about it?”

John’s lips compress a bit. “Inferior vena cava, passing through the liver. That’s where you were shot.”

“Yes.” John’s seen his chart, of course. John was there when they defibrillated his heart when he was taken back to the hospital, was there the first time when the paramedics rushed into Magnussen’s flat, or so John later described it. “Yes, that’s where I was shot.”

John’s fist is pushing into his face, creating wrinkles on the right side that aren’t normally there. “It’s just that you’re not the first person in my life who was shot in that precise location,” he says.

He’s still gruff, but his eyes are pensive. Sad, Sherlock thinks. John is sad. The other memory seems to be an older one; the sadness is well-worn, its sharp edges smoothed away with time. “Who was the other?” he asks, trying to make the question gentler than he usually sounds. The pain roughens his voice a little too much. He’s probably due for another dosage of morphine but doesn’t want to change the subject. He wonders if it was someone in Afghanistan. 

John takes a deep breath through his nose, his mobile features shifting subtly. “My father,” he says. 

It’s Sherlock’s turn to be startled. John never speaks about his father. He knows only that the man was killed somehow (accident or murder was never made clear) when John was young, in his teens, and that it’s possibly the most private subject there is for him. He and his mother are estranged, have been since he left home at seventeen. John’s talked about her a few times – an unpleasant woman with a lot of cats and a penchant for reality television – but he’s only mentioned his father precisely once and the entire subject has always been one that Sherlock has understood to be taboo. He knows that he’s not always the most perceptive of men, even with John, but this is something that he has always known. (Tread carefully, then.) “I didn’t know that your father was shot,” he says, still struggling to keep his voice even despite the pain, so that John will keep talking. 

John changes which elbow he’s leaning on again but doesn’t withdraw. “He was,” he says slowly. “He was on a business trip in Chicago. Something went wrong and he was shot in the heart. That’s all I know. That’s all I’ve ever known.”

Five thousand pertinent questions come to mind, but Sherlock has the wit to know that John will _not_ appreciate his capacity to ask them all at this point. He’s not supposed to be a detective right now; he’s supposed to be a best friend. (Being a detective is considerably easier, but given how much more he wishes he was to John, getting their friendship right is of utmost importance.) So he forces down his intellectual curiosity and asks only, “Was there an investigation?”

“There was.” John shrugs. “An unsolved case. I suppose you’d have loved it, back in the day. It was a long time ago.”

Sherlock hesitates, still wanting to ask more. 

John catches it and looks over at him. “I need a drink if we’re going to talk about this,” he says curtly. “And you’re due for a dose. Be right back.”

Sherlock watches him go, wants to tell him that they don’t have to talk about it. But it was John who raised the subject, and he’s intensely curious. He hears John reaching for the whiskey and the clink of glasses. He brings all three into the sitting room and pours them each a large amount, leaving the bottle on the table beside Sherlock’s chair before sitting down again.

“I’ve got a dose here,” John says, patting his shirt pocket, “but I thought you might prefer whiskey. If you’re going to take them both, go easy on the whiskey.”

“I’ll stick to this,” Sherlock says, gesturing with his glass. He hesitates. “We don’t have to discuss it, if you’d rather not. I’m very interested, of course, but…”

“No, I’m the one who brought it up,” John says, sipping. His chair is angled slightly toward the fire, as is Sherlock’s. He gazes into the flames and sighs, but doesn’t begin to speak. 

He’ll need prompting, then. “So the investigation was abandoned?” he asks. 

“Yes. Cold case. Very cold, now. It happened when I was fifteen and Harry was eighteen. It’s actually the reason we fell out in the first place.” John takes another long sip, swallowing audibly. 

Sherlock doesn’t understand. “But… why? What about it caused the rift?”

John’s brow knits itself together, troubled. “It wasn’t even until the funeral had taken place that she started saying stuff about how she’d thought our dad had maybe been into something shady that had got him killed. She had nothing to base it on, just a ‘feeling’, she always said, and she just couldn’t let it lie. She said she’d always thought he had secrets.”

He goes quiet again. “And did he?” Sherlock asks, not wanting to antagonise him, but the question bears asking, he thinks. 

John shrugs. “I don’t know. I’ll never know. The thing is, it was very much made to look like just a mugging or something, but nothing was stolen and the police report said that the shot was very clean and very professional. It only took one shot, but where it hit him, it took him about twenty minutes to bleed out. He would have been alone and in terrible pain as he died, alone in a big, foreign city, far from anyone who cared about him. That was part of what made it so terrible, to me. The thought of dying alone like that. Even in Afghanistan, your own were always around you. I just – I don’t know, it always bothered me and Harry’s suspicions were salt in the wound.”

“But you never shared them,” Sherlock says, watching him carefully. 

John gestures again, nearly sloshing his whiskey. “How can I ever know? I was only fifteen. Just young enough that I still idolised him, I guess. He was the parent I talked to when things were rough at school, or when I needed help with something. I was much closer to him than to my mother. He was the one who told me that if I wanted to be a doctor, of course I’d be one. My mum would only roll her eyes when I talked about it, so I stopped talking about it and just concentrated on doing it. He wasn’t perfect, but he was my father.”

Sherlock accepts this, falling silent again. “I’m sorry,” he offers, after a moment or two have passed. 

John shakes his head. “It’s ancient history now. He was younger than I am now when he died. Your shot just reminds me of it, is all.”

Sherlock smiles a little. “You were with me,” he reminds John. “I wouldn’t have died alone, at least.”

“No,” John says abruptly. “Thank God I found you in time. Only I still don’t see why you ‘needed’ to be shot in the first place. It just doesn’t make sense to me, Sherlock. I get what you said a few weeks ago about needing to protect me, needing Mary to feel safe, all that about how as long as she thinks there’s a chance I’ll go back to her, she’s not a threat. I just – it still doesn’t make sense why she shot you. It’s not that I don’t get her reasoning, just not how I’m expected to excuse it. There’s no way it was necessary.”

Sherlock doesn’t answer, avoiding the accusation in John’s eyes and looking at the fire instead. 

“That’s the other thing, I suppose,” John goes on. He sounds both pensive and slightly angry. Frustrated, rather, Sherlock corrects himself. “It seems that all my life, I’ve put my trust in the wrong people. It’s the theme that always comes back to haunt me – ‘oh God, I’ve picked another bad one. Shit. Did it again.’”

Sherlock takes a deep breath and doesn’t release it, realising that he must be included in this list. Yes. Of course he would be. Falsifying his own death for two years surely constitutes, in John’s interpretations of the events in question, a betrayal of considerable magnitude. He’s never explained it fully; after that first night it never came up and he never made an effort to discuss it any further. John had made it clear that it was a subject he didn’t care for and Sherlock was content to let it lie. Perhaps he should tell John after all. 

John catches it and looks him. “Not you,” he says, hearing Sherlock’s unspoken thought and correcting it. “I’m sure that some would argue that I never should have trusted you, either, what with you faking your death all that time, but I know you were doing something important. It’s okay. I understand.”

Sherlock exhales slowly, his heart beating a little too quickly. “John,” he says, “I never told you the rest of it. I don’t know why – it just never seemed to come up after that first night and I’m not sure why I didn’t tell you then.”

“Tell me what?” John asks, frowning at him. “You were dismantling Moriarty’s organisation. I know that.”

“That’s not all of it.” Sherlock remembers his drink and takes a sip. “He had narrowed down the three people who were the most important to me: you, Mrs Hudson, and Lestrade.”

John’s eyebrows lift at this. “Not your brother?”

“No. I suppose he thought that Mycroft’s apparent betrayal meant that we weren’t all that close. Anyway – he was going to have them kill you if I wasn’t seen to jump, and if they’d found out I was still alive, they still would have killed you. Taking them out was also part of what I was doing. It was one of the reasons I couldn’t take the risk of letting you know I was alive. But I’m sorry. Now you know everything,” Sherlock says, eyes on John’s. “It wasn’t because I didn’t think that you were trustworthy. I do. I always have. I just needed to make sure that you were safe. It’s the same thing now – I just need to ensure your safety. Please understand that.”

John blinks several times, his mouth working a little. He seems to be having a bit of trouble speaking. “So – ” He stops, choking on the words. “All that time, you were actually saving my life,” he says, sounding a touch uncertain, looking at Sherlock for confirmation. 

He doesn’t know why; he’s just said as much, hasn’t he? “Among other things, yes,” Sherlock says, wishing it didn’t sound so stiff. 

“Jesus, Sherlock,” John says, staring at him, the glass gripped tightly in his fingers. “And you didn’t think that worth mentioning? Christ!”

Sherlock frowns. He isn’t sure how to explain that it wasn’t that it wasn’t worth mentioning, just that, after John had finally forgiven him (albeit under duress), he hadn’t wanted to press the point. “It seemed like there were more important things to be dealing with at the moment,” he says. “The terrorist attack. Your abduction and the bonfire.”

“But do you know what that _means_ to me?” John sounds agitated. And angry. He’s still looking at Sherlock and doesn’t turn away when Sherlock turns his face to meet John’s eyes. “I just – that changes how I feel about your disappearance completely.”

“Does it? Good,” Sherlock says, trying an uncertain smile. He’s slightly uncomfortable with the intensity on John’s face. (Redirect.) “Go back to what you were saying, about trusting people.”

John’s shoulders slump forward a little. “Oh, just – yeah. Apart from you, everyone else I’ve ever trusted has always let me down somehow. Not always of their own accord. My father, just for dying, and Harry for casting suspicion on the reasons behind his death, making me feel like I didn’t even know who he was my whole life. My mother and I were never close, but she lost whatever trust I had in her when she said she thought I wasn’t smart enough to get into medical school. I proved her wrong. I don’t know – I was always the smallest boy in class and so determined to get back at everyone for years of bullying by making something of myself.”

“So you joined the army,” Sherlock says. “Of course.” It fits perfectly. 

“Right,” John says. “I joined the army. In a way it was like a do-over of the earlier part of my life. No mothers or sister, but all sorts of brothers or classmates, plus father figures a-plenty.”

“Major Sholto,” Sherlock supplies, curiosity piqued again. Perhaps John will actually talk about him this time. 

“Right,” John says. “Among others. But yes, he was my commanding officer for all three tours of duty. And then I was invalided out and he was disgraced, fell completely off whatever pedestal I’d had him on. Not just me; most of the other blokes in my unit felt that way, too. That he was human after all, and it wasn’t a revelation any of us had ever wanted to have, regarding him. In Kandahar, he was like a god to us, almost. And then he fucked up and it cost the lives of a whole bunch of young recruits and no one would talk to him again. I was one of the only ones who reached out to him, and he would barely even see me. Neither of us were officially army any more, but he would only address me by my rank. For me, that was the real betrayal. I didn’t blame him for what happened – those things just happen sometimes, rotten luck that it happened to him. But he’d always been the sort who had your back in battle, someone you could absolutely depend on to keep his word once he’d given it. Like a father with his sons, I’d always thought. So for him to turn his back on us after, just because he’d taken a fall in the public eye – that was the worst, for me. I’d thought maybe we could be friends, since I’d lost most of my awe of him, but he couldn’t let any of it go. In a way, it was like losing my father all over again.”

Sherlock nods, the pieces falling into place. So that explains John’s attachment to the man, his reluctance to speak about him. Curious, he asks, “Did you talk about him much with Mary?”

“Mary?” John frowns. “No, not particularly. She wanted to know who he was when I invited him, that’s all. I don’t really talk about him. Even with the other blokes in my unit, we just don’t talk about him. Unspoken rule. A lot of them are pretty bitter about his fall from grace.”

“But you forgave him for being human,” Sherlock says. “Of course you did.” That’s John all over, so compassionate and understanding, and Sholto threw it back in his face. Rejecting his advances at friendship, at a time when John himself was alone and feeling lost in London after three tours abroad, invalided and feeling useless and isolated and without purpose. Sholto had been too absorbed in his own disgrace to see that John could have used the support of his long-time commanding officer. And Sherlock had been so jealous. Until now. He understands, at last. 

“And then, of course, there’s Mary,” John goes on, staring into the fire again. He drains his glass and holds it out to Sherlock for a refill. 

Sherlock takes the glass and empties his own before refilling them both. He silently passes the refilled glass back and waits for John to continue. 

“She was like a life raft when I was drowning,” John says. “I’d met you and you gave my life meaning again, and then I lost you and I was as lost as I was when I got home from the war. Maybe even worse. Mary was my saviour. Until the day she shot you.” He hesitates, then reaches into his shirt pocket, but not for the morphine tablet. Instead he draws out the memory stick. “Will you do something for me?” 

“Of course,” Sherlock says, his eyes on the stick. “Anything.”

John gives an almost-smile at that, but it dies out quickly. “You are, quite literally, the only person in the world that I trust. You know that. I’ve trusted you with my life more times than I can count. Your friendship is everything to me.”

Sherlock blinks. “John…” he starts, but doesn’t know how to finish, doesn’t know where John is going with this. (Surely it isn’t time for a declaration of his own. If he says anything, he’s certain that he’ll say far too much, and it doesn’t seem like the right time for that.)

But it seems that a reciprocal declaration isn’t what John is after. He leans over and holds out the memory stick. “Take it,” he says. “I can’t read this. I don’t want to know what’s on it. I don’t want to know what Mary has done that’s so much worse than shooting you that she thinks it will make me stop loving her, if that didn’t. Read it, would you? But I don’t want you to tell me what it says unless you think I absolutely, utterly _need_ to know. Would you do that for me?”

Sherlock looks at the memory stick, then puts out his hand and takes it, his fingers touching John’s. “Of course,” he says again. It feels heavy in his hand. He looks up at John, their fingers still touching. “You’re sure?”

John retracts his hand, leaving the memory stick in Sherlock’s fingers. “Yes.”

“Then I’ll read it,” Sherlock promises him. 

“Thank you.”

He hesitates. “If it’s something that… would have significance in terms of national or international security…”

“Yes. You can tell Mycroft. But I don’t want to know unless it concerns me personally. I’m going to have a hard enough time with this forgiving business as it is. I don’t need to know anything else.” John sounds very definite. 

Sherlock wants to say something, something that would comfort John, tell him something about how he’ll never betray John’s trust again, but the correct words refuse to come to mind. “All right,” he says quietly. The memory stick feels like a small bomb in his hands. He puts it in his jacket pocket and drinks some more whiskey, trying to think of a way to change the subject. 

***

Sherlock waits two days before reading the memory stick. He could have done it with John in the flat, of course, but he preferred not to. John is still working at the clinic with Mary, a situation Sherlock cannot fathom, given that by John’s own word, he hasn’t spoken to Mary since the revelation seven weeks prior. The shot occurred on the third of July, the confrontation in Leinster Gardens one week after on the tenth. It’s presently the fourth of September, and John has been steadfastly going to the clinic each day, coming home with a clenched jaw and shoulders that take at least an hour before they start to release. His alcohol consumption has risen approximately twelve percent. Sherlock isn’t alarmed; twenty percent or more and he will be forced to say something regarding Harry, and John will hate him for it. 

Today is Monday and therefore John is at the clinic again. Sherlock has had the memory stick in his possession since Friday night and John was at home at Baker Street all weekend, puttering around and never leaving for more than a few minutes at a time. He’d gone to get groceries at one point on Saturday and on Sunday they’d only left to go out for brunch (old tradition, same diner every time) and it had rained and neither of them had emerged from the flat after that. Sherlock takes his laptop to the desk and opens it, fitting the memory stick into a port. He’s been anxious to read this, though he’s not sure what to expect. Documents, photos? Proof of kills? Transaction records of payments? Emails describing jobs? Real name, date of birth, previous aliases and addresses? 

Regardless of what he may or may not have expected, what Sherlock finds is decidedly none of that. It’s a letter. Twelve-point font, Times New Roman. How predictable in that much, at least. 

_Dear John,_

_If you’re reading this, it must be the end for us. There is so much I never told you and if I’ve given you this memory stick, it must mean that you’ve found something out that you never should have known, and now you’re leaving me. This is me coming clean, at the end if not at the beginning. I know that you won’t love me any more once you’ve read this. Maybe you already don’t._

_I’m an assassin. It’s what I do. It’s what I’ve always done. I’ve known since I was a kid that it was what I wanted to be. The other girls always wanted to be ballerinas and movie stars, but to me, being an assassin meant being one of the most powerful people in the world. I started early. I was twelve when I convinced my parents to let me take a knife-throwing course. They didn’t know I’d already been practising against the side of the garage for months. Oh, yes – I have parents. I don’t know whether they’re alive or dead. I haven’t spoken to them since I was fourteen. I never got along with them all that well, and when I started training with the Agency, they urged me to cut ties both for my safety and theirs. It wasn’t a difficult decision. I know you won’t like that, but you understand. I know how it is with your mother._

_I was in intensive training for years, always living in CIA safehouses. I never needed to have a notion of “home”, never wanted one. Home was expendable, just like most people. Personal relationships were a non-concept for me. I was trained to see people as assets, enemies, targets, or temporary work-related allies. There was nothing else. I wasn’t close to my handlers or to my colleagues. I could make instant friendships for the sake of a cover and discard them the instant they weren’t useful to me. It’s a talent, and one I’ve perfected._

_I’m American. You might have guessed that by now, I don’t know. I’m from Illinois. It took me four months to perfect my English accent, working with a coach. I’ve always had a good ear for accents. I have a good ear, in general. You need it in my line of work. I made my first kill when I was seventeen years old. My first solo kill, I should say. I had assisted on others, or been taken along to watch. I was a quick study, my trainers said. My first job was a simple elimination, no one important. Just someone who had gotten in too deep. Anyway, I was seventeen. It was in a city I knew well already, a big city. You don’t want to know the details. It was the first of many._

_I’ve made a lot of money doing what I do. So-called morality has never cramped my style the way it did for so many others. It made me a surer shot. I could always detach myself completely. It was always just a job. But it was also more than a job. The money was amazing and I loved being an assassin. No matter how angry you are with me right now that I would have given you this letter, I want you to know that I gave all that up to be with you._

_Speaking of which, you must have guessed by now that I worked for Jim Moriarty for years. I’m one of the world’s top assassins, he was the king of the crime world, it was an obvious fit. That’s how I came to know who you were. I saw you through a rifle scope before I ever set my own eyes on you, there beside the pool. You reading Jim’s silly lines to Sherlock. But you weren’t pathetic. Even when you were about to faint after Jim left and Sherlock got you out of the bomb jacket, you had a dignity that I liked. And later, once Sherlock’s death was confirmed (bloody amateur work, that!), I got a nursing license and waited for you to start working again. I killed a nurse at your clinic just to ensure the job opening. That’s how much I wanted to be with you._

_It’s meant giving up everything that I am, you know. That was my entire life. I have savings accounts that you’ve never seen. We could travel the world and never work again, except I know how you’ll react to this. You’ll want me to have “come to my senses” and be drowning in my own contrition for the things that I’ve done. I’m not and I never will be. I chose this life and I loved it. There is a new world order out there and in it, there is no room for people who only see the world in black-and-white morality, John. And I’m sorry, but you’re one of those, an old-fashioned, patriotic, right-vs-wrong sort of man. It’s made me very fond of you, but obviously it doesn’t work with the way I see the world. There are weak people and there are strong people who will take advantage of them. You could be one of the strong people. You’re a soldier. But your flashback nightmares suggest to me that you haven’t progressed far enough to see it as simple elimination of an enemy; you were too bothered by the humanity of the other side. This is the part that makes me sure that you won’t love me any more, because we are essentially not the same kind of people. I chose to be one of the strong ones. You’re stuck in your own sense of moralism, hung up on it._

_That said, I love you. I have since before we ever met face-to-face. I could do this with you, if you want me to: play suburban wife and mother. Put aside my past self. I would do that for you. But you need to know that it’s not who I really am. If you can accept that – I don’t want to say “forgive”, because who I am is not something I’m willing to apologise for – but if you can decide to accept it, I’ll be here and waiting._

_Love,  
Mary_

_PS: When I started this letter, I meant to tell you everything, but as I went, I changed my mind. Now I think I should just tell you, though: my first hit was someone you knew. I won’t say more unless you ask. It wasn’t my decision, just a job. I’m sorry, John. I truly am. I’ve known all along but I could never tell you. We’ve been connected from a young age, for most of our lives. I think we were meant to end up together._

Sherlock comes to the end of the letter and sits in silence for several minutes. He is revolted, he realises. He has never thought of himself as a “moralist” by any means, but Mary’s letter makes it clear to him that he is closer to being on John’s side than on Mary’s. Yes, it makes a certain amount of sense to view the world the way she does, but she is far colder than he is. And to despise John’s very integrity and humanity, the very things that make him the best man Sherlock has ever known – to remove those things from John would be to remove John himself from John. To remove everything that makes him who he is, as loveable and admirable as he is. Because he _is_. So much about John is utterly, instantly loveable, despite his temper, the days when his own perceived shortcomings frustrate him, the times when he is fed up with everyone and everything around him. For as many times as Sherlock himself frustrates him, there are the other times, the moments when John looks at him as though every single thing about him is a miracle. He lives for those moments. And all the rest – the way John laughs, his face suffused in delight, particularly when the source of his amusement takes him by surprise. The way he cares with his entire being, uncompromisingly, unhesitatingly. He throws himself into emotion the way he throws himself into danger. All or nothing, no holds barred. Sherlock used to be bemused by it; now all he wants is to be the target of it. 

He knows that John loves him as a friend, loves him unconditionally. Will never stop. But ever since his return – no, even before that, if he’s being honest with himself – Sherlock has had vague ideas of wishing it was more. He’d known it couldn’t be, had dismissed the notion at once. He’d known about Mary, known she was there. Mycroft’s file included a receipt for the ring John had purchased. He’d known it wasn’t possible and accepted it. Yet it hadn’t been until the wedding, until the moment of his deduction, that he’d been blinded by it. _It’s always you, John Watson. You keep me right._ He needs John. Will always need him by his side. Will always crave him like the drug John once described him as in a blog entry he was clearly not meant to see. Will always want him. 

But John is married and to an assassin at that, and his safety is more important than what Sherlock privately craves. Sherlock weighs this most recent information and attempts to decide whether or not it changes anything. Mary’s “cryptic” note at the end is wholly transparent thanks to what John has just told him. It’s no great leap: Mary’s first hit was on someone in a large city that she knew well, would have happened when she was approximately seventeen, at the time when John was fifteen. She claims to be a native of Illinois and that her first kill was in a large city that she knew well: Chicago. Obvious. The victim was obviously more than simply a casual acquaintance of John’s if she hesitated to give a name. QED: Mary killed John’s father. 

Sherlock muses upon this for a few minutes. If John were to find out now that it was Mary who killed his father, he would certainly leave her, putting him at risk. Mary herself has said in her letter that she sees the world in terms of the strong and the weak, with herself firmly in the former category. She would hardly, therefore, accept being abandoned. Mycroft is of the same opinion and he is rarely wrong. Besides which, John explicitly stated that he does not want to be told unless Sherlock feels that he absolutely has to know. He has a right to know this, Sherlock thinks. But possibly this isn’t the time. He has lived with the mystery of his father’s unsolved murder for twenty-six years. A little longer could be deemed acceptable if it helps to ensure his safety. 

A lash of anger comes out of nowhere, directly specifically at Mary Morstan. To have knowingly seduced John – obtained a nursing license and killed another nurse just to get close to him, place herself in his path, at a time when John was horribly lonely and still grieving – while knowing full well that she was the one who aimed a sniper rifle at him at the pool, who assassinated his father when they were both just teens – it’s monstrous. Sherlock considers viciously that the definition of a psychopath, a term which most people don’t hesitate to apply to him, is the inability to feel right or wrong. Mary has just identified herself as such; she sees the strong and the weak rather than a moral scale. But this – this makes him feel ill. In addition, he feels a rare twinge of guilt for not having managed to finish the mission sooner. If he had managed it in less time, returned six months earlier, perhaps he could have prevented John from forming an attachment to Mary. He knows in his rational thoughts that this was not his fault but feels responsible nonetheless. 

More than even this, however, it was therefore Mary who removed John’s father, the apparent glue that had held his family together, as John, Harry, and their mother had all drifted after Hamish Watson’s death, at least based on what little John has told him about that period of his life. Never a large person, he was bullied at school and lost his primary parent and source of support and strength at a time when, possibly, he most needed it. The subsequent years had hardened the chip on John’s shoulder, deepened his resolve (and need) to prove himself, drove him into the army, into the need to show himself as stronger than all of the opposition he’d met with by that point. Mary’s action has literally shaped John into the person that he is today. And since that point, John has been injured, has lost other mentor figures, has lost brothers-in-arms. Has lost Sherlock, and now his wife has betrayed him in the worst of ways. Sherlock feels an unusual stab of compassion for the man he calls his best friend and would rather call something he has no vocabulary to describe. Partner is too shallow. Other half is too flowery. His _John_. The sun to his moon. The earth to his ocean. The orchestra to his violin. There is so much more that he wishes their friendship encompassed, yet this is hardly the time to ask. Besides which, he fears the answer. Does not want to see pity in John’s expressive, kind eyes. But Mary’s rot about the two of them having been linked together from a young age makes something burn within him, low in his gut. _No_. She was the one who damaged John, positioning herself from the first to one day be his saviour. It’s sick, Sherlock thinks. She does not deserve him, this man who has suffered and struggled and built and rebuilt himself over and over and over again, making himself the strongest and bravest and most loyal, compassionate being that Sherlock has ever known to exist. She has no right to him. 

He has no idea what to do with the information. But John asked him to read it, learn it, and hold it within himself. Sherlock will do that much for him, at least. 

(He has no idea whether or not John still loves Mary. He hasn’t said and Sherlock is afraid to ask. It doesn’t matter: he will still do this for John.) 

***

“Hold still,” John says, his voice out of focus the way it tends to get when he’s concentrating on something else. 

“I _am_ holding still.” Sherlock attempts to keep his breathing shallow so that his chest won’t move too much. John is snipping carefully through his stitches, the dark nylon thread pulling against his fragile, barely-healed skin painfully. The kitchen light is too bright overhead, but it’s turned John’s eyes an unusually bright blue, his blond lashes fanning softly out, catching in the light. Sherlock wants to touch those eyelashes with his fingertips, possibly his lips, feel the soft hairs against his mouth. (No. Dangerous to think things like that in John’s presence. He knows how transparent his own face can be sometimes.) He feels vulnerable in the lamplight, sitting on the chair in his trousers only, his bare skin prickling under John’s scrutiny in a way that it never used to do. He doesn’t remember when it got so bad. He used to sleep nude and wander about the flat in a sheet or a barely-tied dressing gown and John never batted an eyelash. Now it seems to him that they’re both significantly more aware of it, and Sherlock has become much more modest. The kitchen is warm, but he feels very exposed. He remembers John’s eyes tracking down his bare chest in the hospital. (Remembers liking it, though possibly that was the morphine.) Now he mostly just feels exposed. 

John snips again. “We’ll have to have a drink after this,” he says in that same, slightly off-kilter voice, face very close to Sherlock’s stitches. “Does it hurt?”

“No.” The word says itself before Sherlock can say it, but honesty forces him to add, “It’s slightly uncomfortable.”

“Is that why your fists are clenched?” John asks, eyes not moving from Sherlock’s chest. 

Sherlock consciously releases his hands, not having realised they were clenched. John is more observant than he lets on, he reminds himself. (Sometimes.) “The discomfort is minimal,” he says. 

John’s mouth smiles a little at this. “Whiskey after,” he promises. “Just a couple more and then I’ll pull out the threads.”

Another three snips, the metallic slide of the scissor blades cold against Sherlock’s skin. He shivers and tries to suppress it. The reason his fists were balled had nothing to do with the small amount of pain and everything to do with John’s dangerous proximity, the intensity on his face as he concentrates. (It’s extremely arousing, being the focus of that intensity.) 

John begins to remove the threads. Sherlock wishes he would go slower to prolong this unusual intimacy, yet doesn’t want to say anything lest John think him actually in pain. “Almost done,” John says, meaning to reassure him. His hair is tickling Sherlock’s chest, causing his nipple to peak. 

Sherlock inhales sharply and holds his breath, willing away the beginnings of an unwelcome erection. Perhaps he should ask John to go faster and damn the discomfort. He attempts to distract himself by studying the mix of grey and blond in John’s hair and decides that the ratio is currently just above sixty-five percent to thirty-five percent. He doesn’t mind it in the least; grey hair suits John every bit as well as blond does. Perhaps even more so. He wants to tell John that when it’s cut very short it makes him look boyish, impossibly young for his age. (No. Best not to speak at all. He cannot trust himself in his current state.) 

John looks up suddenly, as though self-consciously feeling Sherlock’s eyes upon him. Doing so puts his face much too close to Sherlock’s (he hadn’t realised that he’d angled his own downward in studying John’s hair). Sherlock stiffens and straightens up. John looks bemused. “Sorry,” he apologises, though what for is unclear. It’s a bit awkward and comes with an uncertain smile. 

Sherlock makes a neutral sound. “Almost finished?” He sounds curt. 

“Yes. One more.” John plucks it out. “There we are. I just need to bandage you up and you’re good to go, at least for now.”

Sherlock doesn’t respond, holding himself rigidly as John’s deft fingers affix a fresh bandage over the slowly-healing hole in his chest. He slipped just now. He cannot afford to allow himself to enjoy these fleeting touches if it means coming that close to giving himself away. For God’s _sake_ , he’s managed not to let on this far. The trouble is that, before the wedding, he knew that something was very wrong with the entire situation, felt more than a little disgruntled about John’s impending marriage. Wished devoutly that John still lived at home. But he’d known in advance; therefore it was simply a question of assimilating the data at hand and… getting used to it. Only getting used to it had never really happened properly, and suddenly in the middle of his deduction at the wedding, he’d seen it. Known he couldn’t avoid the direct and blazing knowledge of it. That he was being eaten alive over this, over losing John to someone else. Anyone else. It didn’t matter who. Well, it _did_ , but in principle it was the very fact that he wanted it to be himself there with John, himself and no one else. It was rather horrifying, realising the miserable extent of his feelings. Base sentiment. Yet undeniable. 

Before his leap from the roof of Bart’s Hospital, he had been sure that John was interested. But those days are a lifetime away. Mary is here and she is a problem. Liar, disillusioned, so many secrets, cunning, the murderer of John’s father, the mother of his child. A conundrum. 

(Could Mycroft help with this? What would he say? No: he has no use for sentiment and would only tell Sherlock to accept the facts and move on in that brusque way of his. After, of course, flaying the very cells off Sherlock’s metaphorical heart for having let himself sink this far into dependence on another person in the first place, droning on about self-sufficiency in all things. Damn Mycroft. What does he know of friends or love in the first place? Where in his cold-minded wisdom can he actually fathom the concept of heartbreak, of the sort of helpless desperation Sherlock feels at times? No. He will not go to Mycroft. This is his problem. His and John’s. Although: Mary’s behaviour could have far-reaching consequences. Perhaps. He will keep the possibility open.) 

Magnussen is still a factor as well. Mycroft considers Magnussen a sometime-ally. Sherlock considers this for three seconds, barely aware that John is moving away from him and packing up his first aid kit, saying something about a DVD. No: Magnussen is a reptile. Untrustworthy. He needs to be neutralised, not joined. That particular plan is Mycroft’s, however. He’s upheld his end by meeting with Magnussen and promising to deliver Mycroft. It’s up to Mycroft to organise the rest, now that they’re finally working together on that. He could at least ask Mycroft to look into John’s father’s murder, however. If he does it himself, John might find out and he doesn’t want that. Yes. Perhaps Mycroft could be of help, after all. 

John says his name then and Sherlock looks up, his thoughts disturbed. From the look on John’s face, he’s already said his name at least once before this time. “What?”

John smiles at him, slightly confused. “I said, are you coming to watch the movie with me?”

(Movie?) “Of course,” Sherlock says automatically. “Let me just… put my shirt back on.”

John’s eyes slip down his bare torso for a moment, then he nods and looks away. “Of course,” he says. “I’ve got the movie queued up and there’s a drink here for you when you’re ready, but no rush.”

Sherlock turns his back on John and carefully pulls his shirt back on, adding a dressing gown as well. He imagines he can feel John’s eyes on his back, but it’s likely only his imagination. 

***

The autumn passes. Sherlock’s shot wound slowly heals, though it still pains him when he moves the wrong ways and John has still forbidden him to return to case work just yet. In the meantime, John retrieves more of his things from the flat, including some of his books and movies. He behaves as though it’s permanent, though Sherlock knows better. John buys groceries and cooks and cleans things that no short-term guest would ever clean. The day that Sherlock walks into the kitchen to see John on his hands and knees, scrubbing at a spot on the floor with his backside in the air causes his breath to stop in his trachea, his footsteps coming to a dead halt. Without moving, John explains that he’s attempting to clean a mark left by something corrosive that Sherlock spilled on the floor but that it’s already eaten away at the floor tiles. 

“Just – just leave it,” Sherlock manages before escaping down the corridor to the bathroom, where he washes his hands for ten minutes and tries determinedly not to think of John’s arse. He’s been doing so well with simply not thinking about it. Not thinking about Mary is more difficult, particularly in light of what he now knows. Ninety-eight percent of the time he is able to shut off that portion of his mind (and its natural extension into the physical realm) entirely. The situation is very serious and neither of them can afford for him to become distracted with his own extremely private desires. The occasional lapses are sharp reminders of how incapable he really is at suppressing what he feels, however. And far worse than the stabs of physical reminder are the times when he catches himself just sitting and watching John for longer than he had realised, a pang of unsatisfied longing that no amount of logic and rationalism can drown. The smallest things can bring this on. A particular smile on John’s face, rendering him so beautiful and open that Sherlock is left incapable of breathing, so strong is the urge to go to John, touch him, take him in his arms. All things he’s never done before and cannot possibly miss, but it seems that a new need has been created, its vacancy a gnawing emptiness within him. On such occasions, it frequently becomes so strong that he does not trust himself to remain in the room with John and stalks out without a word. Finds something more important to focus upon. 

As for that, he’s got Mycroft looking now; his contacts in Chicago are quietly reopening the long-dead case of the murder of Hamish Watson and digging as surreptitiously as possible. Mycroft has promised him details. Sherlock wants undisputable proof that it was Mary. Mycroft had raised his eyebrows to his nonexistent hairline when Sherlock had come to him with the request for information. “What is this, then?” he’d asked mildly, the mildness not entirely masking the steel in his eyes. 

Sherlock had shrugged, carefully neutral. “I’d just like to know how it happened and it’s a sensitive subject. I’d rather he not know that I’m looking. Therefore I’m asking you to look.”

“Besides which, you’re well aware that my network of resources exists on a far more – shall we say, international scale, of course,” Mycroft had said. 

Sherlock had been forced to acquiesce that this is indeed accurate. “If you wouldn’t mind,” he’d said then, his jaw a bit tight. 

Mycroft had stopped his little game then. “I assume this is more than mere idle curiosity,” he’d said, studying Sherlock carefully. “We have known for some time that John’s father was killed years ago.”

Sherlock disliked the way Mycroft bracketed them together for this. John is _his_ friend, not _theirs_. “Something new has come up,” he said vaguely. 

Mycroft narrowed his eyes. “High personal stakes?”

“Extremely.”

“You already have a hypothesis regarding the case.”

Sherlock had hesitated. “Yes.”

“Care to share?”

“Not at this time.” Sherlock had stood and buttoned his coat then. “Keep me apprised of anything you learn.”

“Please,” Mycroft said, in chiding reminder. 

Sherlock had rolled his eyes and strode from the room. That was on the tenth of September. It’s now mid-October and he hasn’t heard anything yet. He does investigate John’s mother, which is fully uninteresting and reveals nothing, so he turns his attentions to Harry. 

“Question,” he says to John over dinner one night. 

John’s eyebrows lift. He’s made spaghetti and the steam rising from the bowl very slightly obscures Sherlock’s view of him. “Yeah, what?”

“I was wondering about Harry,” Sherlock says, watching John’s reaction. 

John pours another glass of wine and refills Sherlock’s. (Alcohol consumption holding steady at the twelve-percent increase: stable. Good.) “What about her?” he asks evenly. (His fingernails have tightened slightly on the wine bottle, however.) 

“You don’t mind if I ask?” Sherlock asks, to be solicitous. 

John shrugs. “Go ahead. If I don’t want to answer something, I won’t.”

Fair enough. “When did the drinking start?” Sherlock asks. “It was before Clara.”

John shakes his head. “How did you know _that_? Never mind, not important. Yes. It started before Clara. I think it started when she was in university. Lots of partying. Too much. She never finished her degree, flunked out of an arts programme after three years.”

“When did you become aware of it?” Sherlock asks. 

He thinks a bit, his fork digging into his spaghetti but otherwise idle. “Sometime in her mid-twenties, I suppose. I remember bringing it up once when we’d met up for lunch. She drank too much for lunch time – and she wouldn’t get particularly drunk, which suggests habitual drinking, of course.” 

Sherlock nods. “Did she ever tell you her basis for her suspicions regarding your father’s murder?”

John stiffens, but it’s only barely perceptible. “She never had anything concrete,” he says, his voice and face both tightening. “She thought she overheard him making phone calls that couldn’t have been related to his job, thought she saw something on his desk that might have been related to that, too. He was an accountant, always very responsible with money. Harry’s the same way, only she’d hate to be told that. She hates anything to do with our father in general.”

“Did they have a difficult relationship?” 

“Yeah.” John finally remembers his spaghetti and twirls some onto his fork, then puts it in his mouth. He chews, swallows, and reaches for his wine. “They were always fighting. They didn’t have much in common. He never knew what to make of the lesbian thing, but that was just one more thing on top of everything else. He wasn’t intolerant or anything; just didn’t know what to say about it. She always twisted everything he said to make him look like an asshole. I felt bad for him sometimes. You’ve met Harry. She’s like a brick wall, totally impossible to reason with when she’s angry.”

The corner of Sherlock’s lip twitches despite himself. He looks down before John can catch it, but it’s too late. 

“What?” John demands, suspicious. 

“Nothing.”

“Don’t you dare say that it runs in the family,” John warns. 

“Wasn’t going to.”

“Liar.”

Sherlock does permit himself to smile now. He lays his fork against the side of his plate and reaches for his own wine, smirking at John. 

John’s smile is reluctant but there, tugging at his mouth. “I suppose we’re both a bit like that,” he allows grudgingly. 

Sherlock changes the subject slightly. “What about the rest of your father’s family?” he asks. “Are they still in the picture? Did he have siblings that you know well?”

John reaches for the parmesan and sprinkles a little more onto his spaghetti. “The only one I was ever close to at all was his brother, my Uncle Gordon. I haven’t seen him for years except at the wedding, but I liked him.”

Sherlock thinks back to the guest list. “His children are your cousins Eleanor and Lucy.”

“That’s it. Lucy’s the one who didn’t like Mary from the instant they met at that one shower, as you noticed, so Mary stuck her back by the loos at the wedding.” John’s tone is halfway between terse and amused. 

Sherlock refrains from mentioning that if they had put everyone who hated Mary by the toilets, there’d have been no one sitting near the head table. “But you’re not particularly close to any of your cousins,” he says. It’s only a theory but he’s been certain of that since he met John. 

“No, not really,” John confirms. “Never saw them all that much. Gordon would come over to talk to my father sometimes, though. Play chess and that, or watch rugby. I like him. Just don’t see much of him.”

“What does he do?” Sherlock wonders briefly if John will tire of answering questions about his family, which he normally never discusses voluntarily, but John responds anyway. 

“He’s retired now, but he was an insurance broker. Life insurance, I think.” John nods at Sherlock’s glass. “More wine?”

“Sure,” Sherlock says vaguely, mind elsewhere. He picks up his glass once it’s filled, though, and lifts it to his lips, then changes the subject. Enough prying for one night. 

***

Another week slides by and suddenly it’s November. John is home from work but on the phone when Sherlock returns with the shopping one afternoon, his hair dripping rain. John frowns at the sight of him and says, “Listen, I’ve got to go. If you want to go together I can come round on Saturday before it starts, or you can come here and we can get a cab.” A pause. “No, at Baker Street. Yes, still. No, she won’t be coming.” Another pause, then, tersely, “I don’t want to talk about it, all right? Just text me when you’ve decided and we’ll go from there. I’ve got to go. Yes. All right. Bye.” He disconnects and springs to his feet, coming into the kitchen and taking the bags from Sherlock’s hands. “You shouldn’t be carrying all that,” he fusses. 

Sherlock is somewhat pleased by his concern. “We were out of food.”

“Never mind that; you should have texted me. I’d have gone on the way home.”

 _Home_. Sherlock notices this and likes it, but knows better than to show it. “I’m perfectly all right,” he says instead. 

“Sit,” John orders, pointing at a chair. 

“Can I take off my coat?” Sherlock asks mildly. 

“Yes, it’s soaking wet.” John holds out his hand for it as Sherlock carefully disrobes. If he moves the wrong ways, it pulls at the still-healing wound in his chest. The surface wound has been healed for ages but he can still feel the place where the bullet passed aching within him when he twists or bends. John takes the coat from him and hangs it up on the back of the sitting room door, then comes back and switches the kettle on. Ignoring the groceries, he goes to get a clean tea towel and comes back to Sherlock. “You got your hair wet. The last thing you need is to catch a cold on top of everything else.”

Sherlock smiles but doesn’t object as John briskly towels his curls. “It’s just rain. It’s not particularly cold. And the groceries weren’t heavy.”

John shakes his head. “Right. Go on, then, catch pneumonia. Don’t mind me.”

“You’re being dramatic,” Sherlock says, without rancour. He closes his eyes and tries not to enjoy the feeling of John’s hands in his hair. It’s difficult; his scalp is sensitive and he can feel it even through the barrier of the tea towel. He privately wonders if there are any other ways in which he could possibly persuade John to touch his hair without it seeming obvious. (Doubtful.) “Who were you talking to?”

“What? Oh, on the phone. That was Harry, actually,” John says. The kettle whistles and he goes to turn it off, hanging up the towel and making the tea. He puts two mugs down on the table before continuing. “I actually got a bit of news today. My uncle, the one I told you about last week, just died of a heart attack.”

Sherlock is startled. “Oh,” he says inadequately. “I’m sorry.”

“So am I,” John says. He puts the lid on the teapot and looks down at it. “I’d just got to thinking that I should try to see him sometime. Too late now, I suppose. The funeral’s on Saturday. I’d phoned Harry to let her know, see if she wants to go together.”

“I see,” Sherlock says. He thinks for a moment as John sits down kitty-corner from him, waiting for the tea to steep. A family funeral would be the perfect place to investigate John’s family a little more, poke into the matter of Hamish Watson’s doings at the time of his death. Perhaps even broach the matter with Harry if she seemed inclined to discuss it. Discreetly, of course. Although more than this, he feels somewhat that he would like to go for John’s sake alone. It’s a vague feeling and one that he would be at a loss to explain – it’s irrational; his presence will hardly stop John’s uncle having died, but somehow it seems important to be there with him. Should he offer? He hesitates. “Would you like me to come with you?”

John looks taken aback. “To the funeral?” He makes it sound like the most preposterous thing he’s ever heard, his expression buckling with disbelief. 

Sherlock retreats quickly. “Sorry. That was probably a foolish suggestion, I don’t – I shouldn’t have – of course you wouldn’t – ”

John shakes his head and cuts off his stream of babble. “Sherlock. Stop. Sorry, it’s a perfectly good suggestion – it’s very kind. I just didn’t think it’d be your sort of thing, that’s all.”

Sherlock isn’t sure how to respond to this. “Would you like me to come?”

John smiles at him, warm and affectionate now. “If you think you could bear the boredom… that would be rather nice, actually.”

“I haven’t met much of your family,” Sherlock says. “Just the ones involved in the wedding, the ushers and such. I suppose I met some of them in the receiving line but – you’re sure you don’t mind if I come?”

“Mind? No, not at all,” John tells him. “I never thought you would want to. But it’s good of you to offer. Thoughtful. And you know that Harry and I aren’t all that good on our own, so… yeah. The funeral is Saturday, just outside the city.”

“I’ll come,” Sherlock says decisively. He picks up the teapot and pours, feeling privately pleased that John has agreed to this. 

***

When Harry arrives, John is still upstairs in his bedroom, getting ready. Sherlock is sitting in his chair with the Saturday papers. The doorbell rings and he goes down to let Harriet Watson in. John’s told her before that she doesn’t have to do that, that the door is normally open, but she prefers the formality, perhaps. When he opens the door, Sherlock braces himself slightly. He hasn’t seen Harry in nearly three years now. They shared a natural antipathy for one another, but were unfailingly polite. Sherlock rather thinks that he is occasionally more polite with Harry than John is, but John does try. 

She looks a little older, sandy hair coloured a dark brown. It’s cut to frame her face and give it length. The nose is smaller than John’s, the dark blue eyes tired but sober behind a different set of glasses. She’s wearing a knee-length navy coat belted at the waist and she’s a little heavier, Sherlock thinks. Eight pounds. “Harriet,” he says, endeavouring not to sound stilted. “Come in.”

“It’s Harry and you know it.” She steps past him and makes for the stairs, ignoring him. 

Not the most auspicious start. He follows her up and once they’re in the flat he gestures at John’s chair. “John’s still dressing, but I’m sure he’ll be ready soon. My condolences regarding your uncle.”

Harry sits slowly, eyes on him as though suspicious. “Thank you,” she says. She eyes him. “So, you’re back, are you?”

“Yes. Have been for about a year now,” Sherlock says, not rising to the bait. 

“And John’s living here again.” Harry’s tone indicates precisely what she thinks of that. 

“So it would seem,” Sherlock agrees neutrally. He does not sit down across from her. He doesn’t know what Harry does or does not know regarding the state of John’s marriage. He knows that Harry and Mary met at a bridal shower thrown by Mary’s bridesmaid Lisa and that Harry was not an immediate fan. Sherlock had listed her on the collection of people who hate Mary. Harry’s reason for missing the wedding had been a sudden onset of the flu, though Sherlock’s always wondered about that. Harry surely would have been present at the wedding, he’d thought. She prefers to express her relationship with John in terms of disapproval and judgement but she would have considered it her tedious duty to attend his wedding, whatever she thought of his chosen bride. Who may or may not have had anything to do with Harry’s sudden illness and consequent inability to attend. 

Harry’s mouth turns downward, the way John’s does when he’s thinking hard. “Interesting,” she says. “What’s going on there? That wife of his leave him or something?”

“Not as such,” Sherlock says, deliberately vague, and turns the questions around. “Has he said anything about what’s going on between them?”

Harry shakes her head. “Not a word. He just said that they’re separated for the time being.”

“Then perhaps you should ask him about it,” Sherlock advises. 

Harry makes a noncommittal sound and looks at her watch. “We should really go.”

Sherlock sees the opportunity and takes it. “I’ll just go up and speed him along.”

Harry makes no response to this and Sherlock escapes to the third storey. John’s bedroom door is open when Sherlock stops in the doorway. John is peering anxiously in the mirror above the dresser, fidgeting with his tie. He sees Sherlock but doesn’t turn his head. “Is it time to go?” 

“Yes. Harry’s here.” John is wearing his nicest suit and he looks very – something – in it. Sherlock cannot think of the right adjective. Handsome (dull). Put-together (worse). More attractive than his damnable jumpers would ever let on (almost insulting). Beautiful (far too sentimental). If he could find the right adjective, he might actually be tempted to say it. Better this way. But the entire composition gives a pleasing sense of just-right-ness that Sherlock’s vocabulary fails to encompass in a singular word and it strikes him that this is true for every single aspect of John. Whatever he is, it’s just right. Altogether satisfactory. (Sherlock feels a pang of yearning to enter the room, cross over to John, touch his face and hair and mouth. Tell him how [missing word] he is.) (No.) 

John turns then and gesticulates in helpless frustration. “I can’t get my tie right. Somehow the knot just isn’t working for me.”

Sherlock takes that as permission to enter and goes over. He adjust the knot a bit and gets it to lie flat, all too aware of the proximity of John’s face, his warm breath touching Sherlock’s hands as he works as swiftly as he can. Not that he has an issue with being close to John but this is hardly the time, and they are not… that. He is having enough trouble evading his thoughts regarding John as it is. “There,” Sherlock says, aiming for a neutral tone. “Let’s go.”

Harry is drumming her fingers on the arm of John’s chair when they get downstairs. John goes into the sitting room to get her; Sherlock waits at the top of the stairs. 

“Harry,” John says. “Sorry I wasn’t ready.”

Harry gives him a look which Sherlock interprets as semi-exasperated but doesn’t say anything for once. She gets up. “Can we get a taxi from here?”

“Oh, yeah,” John assures her. “Sherlock will get it.”

Harry lowers her voice, though not nearly far enough. “He’s coming?”

“Yeah.” John is short. “Problem?”

“No. Jesus. Calm down.” 

John glaringly ushers Harry through the door and gives Sherlock a look that’s already long-suffering; Harry has annoyed him within the first thirty seconds of their being in the same room. Typical; Sherlock has witnessed their bickering before. Only he hadn’t realised there was a much darker root to it. He shrugs and gives John his best well-what-can-you-do look and follows him down to the street. 

***

The service is mercifully short, held out in Hertford. It and the burial were a joint affair which is now finished. The assembled mourners have been ushered into a white-painted wooden hall where a reception is being held. Throughout the twenty-minute service, Sherlock stood motionless beside John and resisted the urge to fidget, instead half-listening to the litany of Gordon Watson’s achievements and attributes while taking in the faces and behaviour of the rest of the gathered body. He’s learned that he can easily identify a Watson by facial features alone (nose, mouth, and eyes, in that order). There are three alcoholics in the connection besides Harry, no other doctors or members of the military. They are, without exception, unexceptional people. Harry once described them as boring over a dinner that had ended with a fight over the bill (Sherlock had paid; Harry had taken objection for reasons of prickly pride only made clear by John’s apologetic explanation in the taxi later). Sherlock thinks now that perhaps she was right about this: they all seem perfectly pleasant, none with professions that set them apart in any way (mid-level management, mid-level insurance firm employee, paralegal (this is an estimate; difficult to know precisely), night custodian, used car salesman, second-rate estate agent and so forth). John is the only one who stands out, has turned his genetic mediocrity into a person who is genuinely interesting, not mediocre in any way but rather, superlative in many. Sherlock has said _best_ and _bravest_ and _kindest_ , but he could have added _most inspiring, most loyal, most caring, most extraordinary while disguised as perfectly ordinary. Perfect._

“I’m going to get a glass of wine,” John says to him now, breaking into Sherlock’s thoughts. He glances at Harry, who is ignoring the wine table and eating red grapes and cubes of cheese from a paper plate, standing by herself. “Do you want one?”

“In a moment,” Sherlock says, his eyes on Harry. 

“Suit yourself.” John goes off and Sherlock approaches Harry. 

She gives him a wary look. “No, I’m not drinking,” she says pointedly. This has been a subject of discussion between them before. “I’ve been sober for ten months now.”

“Congratulations,” Sherlock says evenly. “I wasn’t going to ask.”

“Right.” Harry rolls her eyes. 

“Actually,” Sherlock begins carefully, “I wondered if I could ask about something else. Just between you and I.”

Harry’s eyebrows arch. “Is this about my brother?” she asks bluntly. “If it’s what I think it is, you’ll have to ask him that yourself.”

“It’s not that,” Sherlock says rapidly. (She is evidently more astute than he’s realised. He’ll have to monitor himself in her infrequent presence.) “It’s about your father.”

Harry stiffens worse than John did. She stops chewing for a second, then swallows with a grimace. “What about him?” she asks. 

“I was curious as to your thoughts relating to his potential criminal activities,” Sherlock says. “I wondered what you were basing that on.” Nothing in the eulogy suggested anything similar of Gordon Watson, which makes Sherlock all the more curious as to Hamish Watson’s possible proclivities. 

Harry considers him, then puts another grape in her mouth. “John’s talked to you about it, then. Surprising. He never talks about it at all if he can help it.”

Sherlock doesn’t tell her about the similarity between his shot and her father’s, or his almost-certain hypothesis that Mary was their father’s killer. “Just a little. Would you tell me what you know?”

Harry sighs. “It’s ancient history now,” she says shortly. “I’d rather not go into it, and if you bring it up with John he’ll take your head off for it. He couldn’t cope with the idea that our beloved paragon of a father might have had a criminal background at all.”

“But you knew something, or heard something,” Sherlock says, watching her intently. 

She shrugs. Her shoulders are rounded under the drab black blazer she chose to wear. Sherlock thinks that she looks more than three years older than John, but that would be the alcohol, the sedentary lifestyle, and the inherent stress of navigating her fraught social life. (Any social relation with Harriet Watson is by definition fraught, he thinks.) “I overheard him talking on the phone about moving funds once, and it was a Sunday night. Couldn’t have been to his banker or something, and besides, why would he have had a personal banker? He wasn’t exactly raking it in; we were always barely making ends meet. It was just the way he was talking, too. And I noticed that he would come home from work far too late. I’d just started my first job and I worked in the same area and finished around the same time and he’d get home two hours later and blame on the tube, or on working late. Working late, sure, but when he’d say he left the office at five and still only got home at half-past seven, who could believe that? I thought maybe he was having an affair, but there were all these secretive phone calls in his study at home. He’d have his voice lowered but I didn’t think it was an affair. He always sounded stressed out, worried, you know?”

Sherlock nods fractionally. “Yes.” Harry is making sense. “Why was he sent to Chicago?”

“Well, that’s the other odd thing,” Harry says, frowning. She glances across the hall to where John is picking at some cheese and looking like he’d rather be anywhere than speaking to what Sherlock presumes is an elderly aunt or some other such relation. “I’d actually gone by his office two days before he left. He wasn’t in and the receptionist didn’t know where he was. She also didn’t know he was going to America, so I don’t know if it was even related to work. He told our mother that it was. And then he never came back, so I don’t know. That’s all I know.”

Sherlock considers for a moment, then asks, “Can you recall when he started behaving differently? The secretive phone calls, coming home late and so forth?”

Harry thinks. “Maybe six months before the trip?”

“Had he been seeing any new people? Mentioning any unfamiliar names at all?”

Harry shook her head. “He never spoke about work at home. He and Mum fought about money a lot but he would never go into details about his salary or anything to do with work at all.”

Sherlock accepts this. “All right. Thank you for telling me.”

Harry looks both surprised and sceptical at this and shrugs again. “Just don’t go talking about it with John. Not if you’re still trying to… well, I don’t know what I’m talking about, do I? Never mind. Excuse me.” She turns and makes for the coffee table. 

Sherlock looks around on the off chance that any of John’s extended family members appear any more interesting or worth talking to about this than they did during the burial, but no one provides any inspiration. He decides to rescue John from the aunt or whoever she is instead. John’s back is three-quarters turned to him as he approaches and he notes a bit of lint on his right shoulder. Sherlock arrives at John’s left and reaches deftly around to pick the lint off before the aunt, who both looks and sounds like the difficult sort, can notice and berate John over it (she’s currently mid-stream about doctors and prescription medication scams) when something unexpected happens. John hasn’t turned to look at him but has clearly registered his presence (Sherlock is standing too close to go unnoticed), and when he feels Sherlock’s fingers light on his shoulder, he misinterprets the gesture as something else entirely. Without moving much at all, John’s arm has suddenly come around his waist, just loosely, but Sherlock is stunned. Evidently John thought that he simply walked up and put an arm around his shoulders – as though this is the sort of thing that Sherlock does all the time – and is calmly reciprocating without the slightest interruption in his conversation with the elderly female. Sherlock has no idea what to do: to refuse to return the gesture would show John the error of his interpretation and potentially embarrass him. Should he just… pretend that that was what he had planned on doing all along? (What will John think of that?!) This is completely unanticipated. Sherlock deliberates for approximately one full second that lasts for several minutes in his mind, then opts for the latter and allows his arm to settle over John’s shoulders. 

He feels several things at once, all of which make it nigh impossible to remain absolutely relaxed or calm – which he _must_ be, because he’s too physically close to John for it to be inconspicuous if he were to suddenly tense up. He feels ridiculous, like an adolescent on a date (not that he has any relevant experience in this area). He feels an agonised lack of knowledge as to how long he should hold this position. How long is too long? How short is too abrupt? The other major, nearly overriding feeling is one of intense emotion, as though the physicality has the power to translate itself directly into the metaphysical realm. He feels impossibly close to John, foolishly warm, horridly sentimental. They’ve never in their lives just casually embraced in public this way, though obviously they’ve had numerous forms of other physical contact before. This nonetheless feels strangely natural and familiar. The proximity transforms instantly into an addiction: he wants to be even closer to John. Put his other arm around him, pull him away from the obnoxious person he’s speaking with, and possibly kiss him. Hold him for hours. Feel the precise nature of what it would be like to know what John’s shorter frame would feel like against his own, face to face. This is ridiculous. He’s incapable of even paying attention to the conversation; every nerve in his body is screaming with the awareness of John, of the solid line of his shoulders under Sherlock’s arm, the warmth of his hip and thigh where they’re lightly touching Sherlock’s body, the casual strength of his arm around Sherlock’s back. He hears his name and suddenly snaps into focus again. 

“… my friend Sherlock,” John is saying. “The detective Sherlock Holmes, you’ve probably read about him in the papers.”

The elderly person peers at him through glasses which are not a strong enough prescription. “Oh, yes,” she says, sounding impressed. “That’s very nice, then. Hello.”

“Hello,” Sherlock says back. Something within him wishes suddenly that he could have been introduced differently. Something that links him more solidly to John: his partner, his living companion/flatmate, professional partner. (Lover, he thinks on a deeper level, and feels a twist of shame strong enough to keep that from rising into his surface thoughts. He will never be John’s lover. Best not to even consider it.) He’s eschewed the term “partner” before, but it would be _something_ to show that he is more than just another of the fifty-two guests who had sat on the groom’s side of the church. _I was his best man_ , he could have interjected. But a wedding is singular, an isolated event. _I’m his best friend. I’m the one he mourned for two years. He gets irritated and restless when he’s away from me for too long._ Although perhaps that’s only the adrenaline, the adventure that John craves. (He wishes devoutly that he had a clearer idea.) Never mind, focus. 

“My aunt Mildred,” John says, and Sherlock takes that as the sign to retrieve his arm and proffer a hand to the aunt. 

He feels the loss instantly, yet it’s also a slight relief. (Odd, that.) “How do you do.”

She shakes his hand and he notices that she reeks of rose-scented hand cream. “How do you do.”

John re-establishes the contact, to Sherlock’s surprise, putting a hand on Sherlock’s back between his shoulder blades. “Sharpest mind in London,” he says, sounding both affectionate and proud, and combined with the contact, Sherlock feels his cheeks heat. He also feels Harry’s eyes on them from across the room and when he glances at her, she simply raises her eyebrows and turns away. 

All three of them are very quiet in the taxi on the way home. 

***

In the days and weeks following the funeral, Sherlock notes that John is demonstrably more physical with him. It’s usually very small things, but the small things occur with greater frequency as November wears on. Sherlock notices that John will occasionally move their chairs closer together and rest his feet on the seat of Sherlock’s as they read or email or talk, the way he did the night of his stag do. He never mentions Mary and Sherlock doesn’t, either. He is starting to wonder whether John will ever speak her name again. As well, a small, wild hope has sprouted that John will not actually leave again. That he will just… stay. He doesn’t appear to think of himself as a temporary guest; as of October he has even started paying half of the rent again. He never mentioned that, either; just left an envelope on the mantelpiece on the first of October. Sherlock silently deposited it directly back into John’s bank account and John either didn’t notice or didn’t comment on it, but on the first of November there was another envelope. Sherlock dealt with it the same way and the subject remains untouched. He is endeavouring very much to keep himself from hoping. John has a ferocious temper and he is extremely angry with Mary, but he still loves her. Sherlock is wasn’t positive on this point earlier in the autumn, but he is endeavouring to remind himself now that this is most likely the case. He isn’t positive, but for his own sake, he must believe it: John will eventually go back to her. 

Meanwhile, John touches Sherlock on the shoulder here and there, occasionally opens doors for him, a hand on the small of Sherlock’s back, will reach for something at the same time, and doesn’t flinch when their fingers touch. Sherlock is coming to hoard these tiny moments, adding each one to his mental collection. Wishing there was a way in which he was allowed to extend these, put his arm around John even in the casual way that they were at the funeral. (Or both arms, curled around John’s smaller body next to his in bed, feeling John’s pulse beat steadily next to his own, damaged heart.) (No. These thoughts _must_ be eliminated.) 

One evening he is lying on the sofa, thinking about an online case (he’d solved it without leaving the flat, but it had still taken the better part of three days). John has sternly extended the ban on case work until after Christmas, but he can still work online. John comes down from his room, picks up the remote and switches on the telly, then comes to the end of the sofa where Sherlock’s feet are. Normally he would say something like, _Come on, budge up, then_. Once he sat on Sherlock’s legs when Sherlock refused to move them. This time he simply lifts Sherlock’s feet by the ankles, inserts himself beneath them, and places Sherlock’s feet in his lap. Sherlock loses his train of thought immediately, going still. John doesn’t say anything and neither does he, wondering if one of them should make a joke or something. However, John doesn’t, and neither does he. 

The news begins and it provides excellent cover for not conversing. The top story is actually interesting: there’s been another political scandal. A Welsh politician has been caught with a (male) prostitute and the news anchors are properly shocked and disapproving. There is footage of the crying wife on the sofa at home and then of the resentful politician refusing comments to the media camped outside his office. Partway through an interview with a receptionist, John puts his hands down on Sherlock’s left ankle and the top of his foot and Sherlock stops being able to pay attention at all. John’s hands are warm, the touch light, but Sherlock becomes immediately aware that his feet are much more sensitive than he realised. John doesn’t seem to think anything of it; his focus still appears to be riveted to the telly. 

“ _… the information came from a source in Morgan’s staff, though the specific employee is unknown at this time_ ,” the news anchor gravely informs the camera.

John points at the screen. “Do you suppose that’s Magnussen?” he asks. “The source, I mean.”

Sherlock’s foot feels instantly colder with the removal of the hand, though John’s left is still resting on his ankle. “Public disgrace – could have been a refusal to comply with one of his blackmail schemes,” he says, focusing on responding to John’s words rather than his hands. “It’s precisely the sort of thing he would do, and the sort of person he would target.”

John shakes his head. “You have got to stop him,” he says. 

Sherlock realises with an unpleasant pang that John is thinking of Mary. (Twinge of misery.) If John is still thinking of Mary this way… They haven’t spoken about her in weeks; he has no idea what John is thinking about that. (Hasn’t wanted to know. Would rather banish all thought of it and continue hoarding these tiny moments of contact and proximity while he can.) He doesn’t respond for a moment, thinking pensively. After a bit, he says, “Have you spoken with Mary lately?”

“Mary?” John sounds surprised. “No. Not at all.”

“You do work with her,” Sherlock points out, lips tightening despite himself. 

“That doesn’t mean we talk. I had her reassigned to Doctor Adams.” 

Doctor Adams is the other doctor at the clinic, whose office is on the opposite side. If Mary is working directly under him now, she’ll be all but out of sight during John’s work days. “There’s no contact whatsoever?” he asks, feeling his brow crinkle. Somehow he’d expected that they spoke sometimes, if only for necessity’s sake. 

“No. Never.” John is still looking straight forward at the television. After awhile, he says, “I’ve been living here with you since July and this is the first time in four months that you’ve asked.”

“I assumed it was a… difficult subject,” Sherlock says, a bit taken aback. “I thought that since you hadn’t mentioned it, you didn’t want to talk about it.”

John huffs a slight laugh through his nose. “What, suddenly you’ve got sensitive?” When Sherlock doesn’t respond, he puts his right hand down on Sherlock’s foot again and squeezes slightly. “Sorry. That wasn’t very nice,” he says apologetically. He sighs. “I suppose I haven’t wanted to talk about it much. No: we’re not talking, Mary and I. She texts me sometimes, just about small things. Sometimes I text back, sometimes I don’t.”

Sherlock wants to sit up if they’re going to talk about Mary. He waits to see if John wants to say anything else. He isn’t talking, though, just sitting there, looking troubled. The news has moved on to another topic and neither of them are paying it any attention now. He decides to prompt John. “What are you thinking about… all that?” he asks. (Strange, to be discussing Mary while John is holding his feet in his lap and touching them.) 

John’s mouth purses the way it does when he’s thinking and he looks down at the carpet. “I still don’t understand why she shot you. It just doesn’t make sense to me. I understand she was being threatened, but I don’t understand how she thought that shooting _you_ would solve that problem. You weren’t the one blackmailing her.”

“No,” Sherlock agrees cautiously. 

“And you’re her _friend_ , or you were,” John says, scowling. “You just don’t _do_ that. I can’t forgive that. I can’t even understand it, never mind forgive it. Tell me how she thought that I wouldn’t find out unless she meant her shot to kill you? That’s the part that doesn’t make sense. Obviously I was going to find out. You would have told me no matter what, right?”

“Of course,” Sherlock says. 

“So, hypothetically,” John goes on, sounding dogged, “if she’d come to you and told you that someone was blackmailing her about her criminal past – and that’s a whole other topic – and asked you to keep her secrets from me, would you have kept me in the dark?”

Sherlock hesitates for a moment, then answers honestly. “No,” he says. “I might have waited awhile if I thought your knowing would endanger you, or tried to help her find the best possible way to tell you the truth. But no, I wouldn’t have kept it from you.”

John’s fingers tighten on his foot in seeming approval, the thumb of his left hand rubbing the ankle of Sherlock’s other foot mindlessly. “That’s what you were supposed to say,” he says. “Good answer. Okay, then: so she probably knows that, if you had to choose between her and me, your loyalty would have to go to me. You’re _my_ best friend, not hers. So no matter what, if you find out, I find out. So how does shooting you help, unless she meant to silence you permanently? If she was only trying to slow you down, she could have shot you nearly anywhere. Or she could have just shot Magnussen.”

“She didn’t want you getting blamed for that,” Sherlock points out. The thumb on his ankle feels rather good but he cannot allow himself to give it more than passing notice. 

“All right, but she could have knocked him out and then asked you to help,” John retorts, growing angry. “Or, you know what, what about this: she could have tried being honest in the first place. How’s that for a concept?”

Sherlock pauses. “John,” he says carefully, “that… was never going to happen. A woman like her doesn’t just give away her own cover. Not after years of being trained to do whatever it takes to keep it in place.”

This doesn’t help. “Oh, so our entire marriage was just a cover story?” John demands. He turns his head to look at Sherlock and their eyes meet. “You’re not helping her cause, if you’re trying to.”

“I’m not. I’m just trying to help make sense of it,” Sherlock tells him. 

John moves his right hand so that it’s resting against the bottom of Sherlock’s socked foot, his thumb rubbing against the arch as the other continues to massage his ankle. (The combination feels immediately and embarrassingly pleasurable. Sherlock endeavours not to notice it and fails this time.) “Well then, how about this,” he says instead. “Once she knew that she was being threatened, she could have come clean then. She _always_ could have chosen to tell me the truth. If she had, that would have eliminated his leverage over her, if what she was so afraid of was my finding out her past.”

“Partly,” Sherlock agrees, feeling John’s touch all the way up his calf and thigh, the sensation coiling into his testicles. (Difficult to concentrate. He hopes rather badly that he won’t develop an erection over this. Ridiculous to be thirty-seven years old and still unsure of how his own body will respond to certain stimuli. Or rather, to John specifically.) “You’re forgetting that Magnussen also has material on her that would send her to prison for years. She said so herself.”

John processes this for a moment. “So our marriage _is_ her cover story,” he reiterates. “‘Mary Morstan’ is the front and I’m the prop husband that keeps it in place.”

Sherlock doesn’t know how to respond to this. “I’m not sure,” he says, uncertain as to what else he could possibly say. Then, “I’m sorry, John. I don’t know what to say.”

John squeezes his foot again, as though he’s somehow deemed this an acceptable way to convey his affection. “It’s not your fault,” he says. “Not your fault that she shot you, or that she is who she is. Though I wish you’d seen it sooner. Wish _I’d_ seen it sooner. Before there was a baby involved.”

And that’s it, Sherlock realises. If it weren’t for the baby, John wouldn’t even be questioning any of this; he’d have left Mary the night of the revelation on the tenth of July. But the baby means that he will definitely go back. He isn’t looking for explanations, not really: he is looking for justifications that will help him process Mary’s actions to the extent that he can decide he is capable of accepting them and living with them. He is steeling himself to take Mary back. Sherlock feels cold in the pit of his stomach and the silvery sensation snaking through his pelvic area dissipates and fades. 

(Probably for the best. He will never be John’s lover. This is fact.)

***

As the days creep toward Christmas, Sherlock spends a great deal of time watching for signs of John’s imminent departure. So far there are none; his shirts are all hanging in his closet, belongings scattered wide over his dresser. He is generally quite tidy, but Sherlock remembers having seen the flat he shares (shared?) with Mary and noting that John was always careful to keep his various small objects neatly arranged and contained. Here, one of his cardigans sits draped over the back of a kitchen chair, there is a book on the table next to his armchair, his briefcase is open on a desk chair, and his things in the bathroom are mixed in and among Sherlock’s as though they’ve become collectively-owned items. There are other signs that would suggest that John has no immediate intention of moving out again, but Sherlock refuses to relax his guard. John _will_ leave. No amount of wanting him to stay will alter that. (Asking him to stay would be embarrassing, only because he knows that John would say no.)

Lestrade calls one day, alleviating his private misery. He wants to know if Sherlock is still on enforced rest. Sherlock hesitates slightly too long and Lestrade knows instantly. (It’s highly probable that John has already spoken to him.) 

“If you are, you are,” he says quickly. “You don’t want to hurt yourself. It’s fine. But we’ve got a bunch of code we can’t decode – all of our best have been stumped so far.”

Sherlock gives a snort to indicate his opinion on Scotland Yard’s “best”. “What sort of code?”

“I’ll email it to you,” Lestrade says. “Give you something to do while you’re hanging about at home.”

Sherlock accedes with a little more enthusiasm than he might have done; he’s getting a little bored (John’s presence notwithstanding), and Lestrade disconnects. 

He isn’t able to solve it by the time John comes home that evening. John persuades him to take a break to eat. Sherlock tears himself away long enough to help John cook, then returns to it. He stays awake all night working on it, to John’s exasperation and mild lecture (the self-care one; Sherlock tunes out but appreciates the thought nonetheless). He naps in the morning and then returns to the code. 

When John gets home, he suggests that they order in and Sherlock agrees. He’s reduced the code somewhat but not solved it entirely. They eat on the sofa and talk, and then while John is putting away the remains of dinner, Sherlock stretches out on the sofa with his laptop balanced on his chest, his head at the end where he usually puts his feet. 

It takes a few minutes, but then John appears, two glasses of whiskey in his hands. He smiles and makes an exasperated sound at the same time and comes over, setting the glasses down on the coffee table. “Oh, no you don’t,” he says, and goes to put a DVD in the player. Once that’s going, he comes to the sofa and lifts Sherlock’s head this time, determined to sit in his usual place. He sets Sherlock’s head down on his left thigh. 

Though he isn’t protesting in the slightest, Sherlock feels he should put up a token objection and says, mildly, “You could just sit in your chair.”

“I like sitting on the sofa,” John says stubbornly. 

“Suit yourself, then,” Sherlock says, and attempts to reabsorb himself in breaking the code and to ignore the fact that his head is resting on John’s thigh. (Is John somehow unaware that this comes dangerously close to the line which John himself would, Sherlock assumes, prefer to keep in place between them. If even _he_ can see that this is questionable territory, how can John be unaware of it? Possibly John considers it negotiable, that it’s merely platonic affection which he is expressing. Unfortunately for Sherlock, his body and heart both would prefer to interpret it otherwise. Never mind. Work.)

“This won’t bother you, will it?” John asks as a trailer for something involving a lot of explosions plays. “I know I could just suggest you take a break from your code, but I know I’d be wasting my breath.”

Sherlock thinks briefly of the irony that John thinks that some dull, easily-ignored film will distract him more than the proximity of his crotch. “It’s fine,” he says, keeping his tone devoid of expression. 

“Tell me if it’s too loud or something.”

Sherlock makes a sound of assent and turns his focus back to the code. For the first twenty-two minutes of the movie, he tunes it out and works, but his thoughts keep wandering back to the muscle of John’s thigh beneath his head, the closeness of his torso. If he were to turn his head to the side, he could bury his face in John’s jumper. The film John has chosen is a typically mindless action drama, but after twenty-three minutes, Sherlock gives up on the code and closes his laptop, putting it down on the coffee table. John makes a sound that conveys apparent satisfaction at this, and – possibly without thinking – his right hand comes down to rest on Sherlock’s forehead, his left arm stretched out along the back of the sofa. Sherlock closes his eyes to keep any reaction his face may be giving away to himself. 

“Are you falling asleep?” John asks. 

“Mmm.” It’s neither negative nor positive. 

“Shouldn’t have stayed all up night,” John chides, but his hand strokes over Sherlock’s hair. “The point of taking a break was to, you know, take a break. Not to work yourself to death.”

“I’m not.” It’s all Sherlock can manage; the feeling of John’s fingers in his hair is hypnotic and intensely pleasurable. He swallows and hopes John won’t notice. 

John lapses into silence, watching his film, but Sherlock can feel that his attention is more on Sherlock than the movie, that they’re both thinking only of John’s fingers in his hair – Sherlock wondering what it means, if anything, and John projecting solid unwillingness to even acknowledge that it’s happening at all. 

Sherlock fights a silent, internal battle between trying not to relax while simultaneously not blocking the pleasure of John’s touch from seeping into his scalp, soaking down his spine and pooling in his belly, but after awhile he exhales despite himself and feels his body unwind. It’s blissful, provided he doesn’t allow himself to think of how temporary it is. Perhaps, just this once, the moment can stand alone, revelled in without the foreshadowing of reality, of the most likely outcome. Sherlock closes his eyes a little harder and, just for a moment, feels everything that he feels for John wash over him like a wave. 

The movie has gone to a quiet part; two people are talking outside in the rain and it isn’t going to work out between them. “Are you asleep?” John asks, voice barely above a whisper. 

“No.” 

“I thought maybe you were.” John hesitates. “Can I ask you something?”

“Yes.” John’s fingers are still in Sherlock’s hair, making his tongue heavy and thick in his mouth. 

“Do you remember what I said, awhile back, about trusting people? When we first talked about my father?” John’s tone is somehow wistful. 

Sherlock opens his eyes and tilts his head back a little so that he can see John’s face. “Yes,” he says. “Of course.”

John’s eyes find his, looking down into his face. He stops moving his hand but doesn’t remove it. “I meant it when I told you that I trust you. That you’re the only person in the world that I trust completely. That’s why I gave you the memory stick.”

“I remember,” Sherlock says, thinking again of his unwanted knowledge about Mary and John’s father and briefly wondering again if he should tell John. (He said he didn’t want to know. Is this where this is going? Does he want to know, after all? Would that change anything in terms of his eventual return to the flat?) “Why do you ask?”

John shakes his head slightly. “I don’t know why I’ve always trusted you, but I just _did_ , from the start, even when I thought you were a bit mad. But I never thought you would ever let me down on a personal level. That’s why your so-called death was such a shock. It didn’t fit with everything I thought I knew about you. But I never should have doubted you. You were saving my life.”

 _Among other things_. Sherlock just stops the thoughtless words before they can leave his mouth. John knows about the other reasons; they aren’t important for whatever point he’s currently trying to make. “Yes,” he says instead, and waits. 

John’s face is troubled, as though he’s still trying to work something out. “You never have let me down,” he says. “You’re the only person in my life I can honestly say that about. You’ve _never_ once let me down.”

Sherlock thinks of all the times he’s experimented on John, played small tricks on him, made fun of his jumpers, his height, his temper, all of it, and wonders that none of this constitutes him having disappointed John in all that time. Instead he sits up swiftly and turns to face John, not wanting to say what he’s about to say lying down. He’s closer than he meant to be, directly beside John, and the arm that John had left on the back of the sofa now seems to be half around his shoulders just because he’s sitting next to it, though John hasn’t moved it. John’s right hand is resting on his leg and he’s watching Sherlock and waiting. “I never will,” Sherlock says, and it’s a promise. “ _Never_ , John. Not if I can help it.”

Their faces are too close. John’s eyes are on his, then flick down to his mouth. For one heart-stopping moment, Sherlock actually thinks, in a complete suspension of credulity, that John is about to kiss him. It’s there, hovering in the space between their mouths, and he can feel everything that he feels exuding from himself like radiation. Surely John can feel it, feel Sherlock’s emotion beating against him like rays of sunlight against his skin, feel that Sherlock _is_ capable of love, that he knows it isn’t merely human error, that that was just something foolish he said on the day of the night that he was shot. John _must_ know; he cannot possibly miss it at this range. 

Sherlock moves his eyes from John’s mouth to his eyes and says his name, barely hearing it, his voice is so low. 

John inhales sharply and sits back, opening the space between them again. He is breathing quickly and it seems that his pulse is elevated. “Christ,” he says heavily, and doesn’t explain why. He withdraws his arm from behind Sherlock and looks down at his hands, opening and closing them in his lap. “I know that,” he says, not looking at Sherlock. “You’re an amazing friend, for all the rest of it. You really are.” The hands ball into fists, then release. “I, er, should get to bed, I think,” he says, suddenly awkward. 

Sherlock’s intestines turned to ice the moment John pulled away. Everything seems to deflate, all of the tension that had gathered between them, only to be replaced by this new and wholly unwelcome tension. (Is John aware that they were about to kiss? Surely even John knew that. Is it possible for them to pretend otherwise in any way?) “You’re not finished your movie,” he says, his lips moving stiffly, the words utterly insignificant. 

“It’s fine,” John says hastily. He locates the remote and stops it, switching off the television in the process. He gets up and takes several steps away from the sofa. “I’ll, er, see you in the morning, if you’re awake.”

He pauses for a moment, as though giving Sherlock a window in which to say good night. Sherlock says it woodenly, filling in the appropriate gap, and John is gone, his footsteps beating a hasty retreat up the stairs. Sherlock, left alone, pulls his knees to his chest and curls in on himself for a long, blank stretch. His mind feels numb. Eventually, when the moon is high and small in the night sky, he unfolds himself from the sofa and goes into his bedroom and does not come out until well after John has departed for the clinic the next day. 

***

The following day, Sherlock notices that John’s cardigan disappears from the kitchen. The book follows, then a few of the things in the bathroom. John is cordial with him but not warm, his eyes avoiding direct contact with Sherlock’s when possible. Nothing has changed outwardly, unless it’s that John has cut off all physical contact with him, and neither of them sit on the sofa any more. John stays in his chair, untouchable, and Sherlock finds he can’t bear even that, and stays in the kitchen or at the desk, or not in the flat at all. He pushes the knowledge that John is preparing to depart out of his active thoughts, stowing it away in some corner of his mind, but he can feel it there, eroding like a sand structure being slowly devoured by the lapping waves of his awareness of it. 

The day after the incident on the sofa is the twenty-second of December. His mother phones that afternoon to tell him that both John and Mary have accepted her invitation to Christmas dinner. Sherlock hangs up without a word, feeling nothing whatsoever. He closes his eyes and reminds himself that he always knew that this was coming. (How many times did he remind himself? John was always going to leave.) 

He does not tell John that he knows. 

***

When they leave on Christmas morning, neither one of them says anything, but Sherlock knows that they both know that John is not coming back home with him that night. 

*


	2. Chapter 2

**Part II**

In thirty-seven years, Sherlock has been wrong before. He has even been very wrong before, but in all his life, he has never yet made an error of this magnitude. 

He’d thought he’d be able to focus. He’d thought he _was_ focused. But Magnussen has, once again, outsmarted him, been not one but six or seven steps ahead of him, and now he and John are about to pay the price. Sherlock doesn’t care about himself, not in the slightest. When he’d stepped into his parents’ sitting room and found John bending anxiously over Mary, he knew it had happened: John had forgiven her, taken her back. Sherlock had registered it, noted it, filed it away and refused to think about it: the helicopter was already approaching, as per his arrangement with Magnussen, and there was simply no time. His sense of reality disappeared when the ground dropped away beneath the helicopter. There was a job to do and he could not afford to notice the part of his chest that had turned to ice. 

His sense of reality returns sharply in the sound of Magnussen’s long middle finger flicking John in the face. _Thwack. Thwack. Thwack._ Stiff-jawed, steely-eyed, Sherlock can nevertheless sense the desperation growing in John. This is, he thinks abysmally, the most apt portrait of his failure in summation: not only has his error caused the collapse of Mycroft’s entire plan, but Mycroft will return with others and they will find the two of them there with what appears to be sensitive information (it _is_ Mycroft’s laptop, with all but two or three dummy files erased in the event that Magnussen had wanted to check it), and they will be arrested. Meanwhile, the vilest human to have crawled the face of the earth is flicking John in the eye, assaulting his dignity in the meanest and pettiest of ways, and Sherlock is utterly powerless to do anything about it. John says his name, the unspoken plea for help there in his voice, and Sherlock can only abjectly apologise and tell John to go on taking it. He wishes he could close his eyes and cover his ears. Every flick drives his failure deeper: he has finally succeeded in letting John down completely, and in doing so, he has ruined John’s life. 

Sherlock feels worse than he has ever felt before. It’s over: Mary has won. John has gone back to her, and now the two of them are about to be arrested for treason. He has failed Mycroft and failed John and lost everything that means anything to him. And as he stands there, watching Magnussen and watching John, it occurs to him that there is only one course of action that remains to him now. He has already lost John. The kiss that never transpired four days ago will never happen now. Any chance that it ever could have happened died forever the moment John demanded to know if he had a plan and Sherlock had no answer, stunned by the magnitude of his own error and unable to respond. That was the moment that ended it any hope of it for good, the last nail in the coffin already built of John’s act of forgiveness and the burnt memory stick in the fireplace. Now all he can do is save John from a prison sentence. Save his life, his happiness. Maybe in time, he can be happy with Mary again. Moderately happy. That part, he cannot control, but there is one thing left that he can do for John. He makes up his mind. 

The helicopters are hovering around them; it’s time: they have an audience. Witnesses. He shouts his prepared words at Magnussen, reaches into John’s pocket for the gun, and shoots Magnussen in the forehead. Of the two of them, John is the better shot, but at this range he cannot miss. It’s a clean shot; Magnussen is dead before his body hits the terrace. (He’d like to think he wouldn’t deliberately shoot someone in the heart, aim for a slow bleed-out. He may not be anyone’s definition of _normal_ , but he isn’t usually cruel, at least not deliberately.) 

“ _Christ_ , Sherlock!” John shouts, his hands in the air, incredulous, then again, softer despite the noise of the helicopters a moment later. “Oh, Christ, Sherlock…”

It’s all over. Nothing matters any more. Sherlock tosses away the gun and manages to deliver his last few lines with his façade more or less in place. He drops to his knees and turns his back on John. 

The lights of the helicopters are a blinding glare in his eyes, the propellers a hazy thunder in his brain. 

***

“I hope you’re satisfied with yourself,” Mycroft says an age later, in tones of disgust. “Do you have any idea how difficult that was to pull off?”

Sherlock doesn’t care. He doesn’t care that he’s going back to Serbia, doesn’t care about what’s to follow. It could end now. It’s true that he would rather face Serbia again to a lifetime sentence in prison, but the certain fatality of the mission does not matter in the slightest. He shrugs, only because Mycroft is expecting a response and will pester him until he gets one. 

“Some thanks might be in order,” Mycroft says in irritation. “You have no idea, the lengths I’ve gone to.”

“Thank you,” Sherlock says expressionlessly. The breezeblocks are cold at his back and cold is all he can feel. It’s the twenty-fifth of December. It’s cold outside. Of course. “When I am I leaving?”

Mycroft sighs and stops pacing, turned three-quarters away from him. He looks up first, then angles his chin down at the floor. “Tomorrow or the day after, I expect,” he says, and he sounds weary now, possibly resigned. “They’ll be getting as many contacts into place as possible. There is something else in the works but nothing is finalised yet. I’d better not say anything more, in case… well, never mind.” He turns abruptly, pivoting on a heel, fixing Sherlock with his sharp, hazel gaze. “I don’t suppose you’d care to explain,” he says. 

Sherlock shrugs again. “What is there to explain? I made an error. We all did. I rectified it to the best of my ability. He is dead; therefore what he knows has been eliminated. I should think you would be satisfied with that.”

Mycroft rubs at both temples with his right hand. “It was more than that. You wouldn’t have done this without a reason. Not like that. Not in full sight of a dozen witnesses.” When Sherlock makes no response, he goes on, less sternly than he might have. “Sherlock. Tell me. What were you thinking?” 

Sherlock stares at his knees. It doesn’t matter; Mycroft almost certainly knows already. “There was a strong chance that John might have done it himself,” he says dully. “To protect his wife.”

“Oh, for God’s sake,” Mycroft snaps. “ _Sherlock_. Haven’t you done enough for him yet? You gave up over two years of your life for him already without so much as a thank you note on his part. What more do you think you owe him?”

“I don’t _owe_ him anything,” Sherlock says irritably. “And I was taking down Moriarty’s network – ”

“Yes, though the greater part of your motivation was his safety – don’t pretend otherwise,” Mycroft interrupts. 

“ – and he has a life to get back to,” Sherlock continues, angry with the interruption. “A marriage. A child. I was saving that life for him. What do I have?”

A peculiar expression comes over Mycroft’s face and he stops trying to talk, closing his mouth. (Is it pity? Sherlock devoutly hopes not.) He blinks once or twice, then offers, “You have your work.”

“Oh, please,” Sherlock says, rolling his eyes. “London got along just fine without me those two years. You would have solved the terrorist threat sooner or later. I don’t see why I shouldn’t be doing something useful in Serbia instead.”

Mycroft is studying him with too much knowledge on his face now. “He forgave her,” he states. It isn’t a question. He shakes his head. “Why, I cannot possibly fathom. But that’s it, isn’t it? John forgave Mary and moved out and now you think you have nothing to live for, nothing to lose. You actually thought he might stay with you, never go back.”

Sherlock looks away, refusing to dignify this with an acknowledgement. 

“Oh, Sherlock,” Mycroft says, sighing again. He doesn’t look over, which is a mercy. “I’m sorry. I truly am. But it was always going to be this way. Mary is pregnant. And you know he’s never fully understood you or appreciated you. He takes you for granted – he always has. There was always going to come a day when he expected you to have the answers to everything and you wouldn’t know something for once and his entire illusion about you would have fallen to bits. I’m only surprised it took so long to come about. I never knew whether I thought his presence would be good for you or not. I wish you hadn’t let yourself get involved and attached – I _did_ warn you – but these are the consequences. Did you think that sacrificing your entire life and your freedom for him would change anything? Make him feel differently about you, about his wife? Tell me that, at least.”

“No,” Sherlock says stonily. “But that’s not why one does these things.”

A small silence forms in the holding cells. It’s Christmas night and Sherlock’s cell is the only one occupied. At their parents’ house, his mother and father will be left with Mary and Bill Wiggins and wondering what happened to Christmas dinner. Sherlock wonders if he will ever see them again.

“Why, then?” Mycroft asks finally, breaking the silence. 

Sherlock shakes his head. “You wouldn’t understand.”

“Tell me, then.”

“Love,” Sherlock says, the word heavy and bitter on his tongue. _Love combined with an absolute loss of hope_ , he could have said, but the word alone is true enough. He knows that he is far from the most knowledgeable person in the area of love, but he does understand that this is the way it is supposed to work. “You’ll tell our parents something, I assume.”

Mycroft looks at the floor and shakes his head. “I don’t know what to tell them. Not the truth, certainly.”

“You’ll think of something.”

Mycroft nods slowly, then looks around for a chair. There’s one a few metres away and he goes to retrieve it, carrying it over to Sherlock’s cell and then sitting down. 

“What are you doing?” Sherlock asks in surprise. 

“It’s Christmas, brother mine,” Mycroft says softly. He looks ten years older than he normally does. “It may be that I have to send you off to your death tomorrow or the day after, but I can at least see that you don’t spend Christmas all alone down here.”

Sherlock turns his head to meet Mycroft’s eyes and finds himself unexpectedly moved. He manages a nod, a silent understanding passing between them, an acknowledgement of some sort, years of bad history becoming somehow insignificant in a mere moment. He turns away again and resumes his stare at the far wall. _But it’s Christmas_ , he hears John’s voice protesting in his head, and wonders how John is spending his. He knows with whom John is spending it: the woman who put a bullet in his heart, who was still apparently worth leaving him for again, in the end. The thought hurts too much to even contemplate. 

***

John’s face is clouded and opaque on the tarmac, a mixture of uncertain emotions swirling just beneath the surface. His eyes are shuttered off, his mobile mouth changing from set resignation to being on the brink of saying something or asking something, but the half-anticipated question never comes. 

Sherlock thinks over the past six months and the volume of things which never happened but could have, if only things had been different. Is there any point in saying anything now? It’s too late: it’s all over and there’s nothing to lose. Perhaps that’s precisely why he _should_ say it. Let John know that it could have happened, show him how it could have been, had he only wanted it more. The possibility surely existed on John’s part – Sherlock is almost certain of this. Yet he chose Mary in the end and would likely deny anything he might have felt for Sherlock on some unacknowledged, alternate plane of reality, to his dying breath. Well. If nothing else, Sherlock hopes that he managed to at least postpone said dying breath for a very long time. He’d succeeded in saving John’s life the first time, but left him bitter and grieving. This time, he’ll have hopefully saved John’s life but also left him with a life he could live contentedly. This time he shouldn’t grieve as much; he’ll have Mary and his child to comfort him. Knowing that her secret has been burnt unread and that John is still entirely ignorant as to the identity of his father’s murderer, she will relax and John will never know. Yes: it’s better that Sherlock never told him. 

And yet he still wants to tell him this. Just so that John doesn’t go thinking that it was never an option or that Sherlock never would have been willing, if John had chosen him over Mary. He takes a deep breath. “John, there’s something… I should say. I’ve – meant to say always and then never have. Since it’s unlikely we’ll ever meet again, I might as well say it now.” He stops, takes another breath, and risks a look at John. _No_. He can’t say it. Everything in John’s face suggests defensive posture; he’s tensed himself, braced against whatever Sherlock is about to say. So Sherlock swallows down the words and substitutes a poor joke, but it’s almost worth it to see John laugh again. It’s been so long since he’s seen him laugh and despite everything else, he finds himself smiling, too. (His very being is programmed to respond to John automatically; he cannot prevent himself from smiling back at him.) 

“It’s not,” John says in response to _Sherlock is actually a girl's name_ , containing his laughter. 

“It was worth a try,” Sherlock says with a shrug, the small smile still quirking his mouth into odd shapes despite himself. 

“We’re not naming our daughter after you.” John speaks lightly but the underlying message is clear: he’s made his choice without regret. 

“I think it could work,” Sherlock says, but it’s only words. They both know that he doesn’t mean it and that neither of them are thinking of the baby’s name in the slightest. John allows his gaze to be held for a few short seconds but his face is still closed off. The plane is waiting. (Fine, then. Formality it is. Sherlock will swallow down the never-spoken words and take them to his grave unuttered. Perhaps it’s better this way.) He pulls off his glove and extends his hand. “To the very best of times, John.”

John hesitates, looking down at his hand, then takes it. He doesn’t speak, just stands there holding Sherlock’s hand. It goes on a little too long, Sherlock simultaneously not wanting to let go and leave John forever, yet also hardly able to bear even this small, overly formal gesture. _Let go. It’s over._ He releases John’s hand and turns away, not looking back as he enters the plane. 

Out the window, John is standing next to Mary, holding her hand. Mycroft has disappeared into a black town car, but no one has left yet. They all disappear from sight as the ground drops away, and Sherlock feels as though the greater part of him has been left behind on the tarmac. John Watson, his external heart, his conscience, his lantern in the darkness, giving light and inspiration to his genius. Without John, he is nothing, an empty husk being blown away on the wind. 

Sherlock closes his eyes. 

And then the phone rings. “Sir?” The agent on board is addressing him. “It’s your brother.” 

***

“Happily, Elizabeth Smallwood does not hold you responsible for the suicide of her husband,” Mycroft says, holding up a glass of brandy to swirl it in the firelight. “Once she found out who it was who had shot you – I, naturally, filled her in on that – she knew that you would be in recovery for several months and unable to help her husband. Of course the other members of the enquiry can never know how badly she wished for retribution for the exposure of her husband’s correspondence with Ms Driscoll; therefore this is her way of thanking you for having dispatched Magnussen.”

Sherlock absorbs this. “So this entire plan – bringing Moriarty back from the dead – was nothing but a ruse to get me out of the mission?”

“Yes,” Mycroft says. He looks insufferably smug, far too pleased with himself. “I thought it was rather clever.”

“Well, it worked, at any rate,” Sherlock says, scowling slightly. “So now what?”

“Now you stay here for two weeks,” Mycroft informs him.

“Here?” Sherlock repeats. “In your flat?”

“House arrest, little brother,” Mycroft says placidly. “Meaning: we need to keep you out of the public eye for the time being. I would also, for a variety of reasons, prefer that Ms Morstan not find out just yet that you’ve been reprieved. Therefore, not Baker Street.”

“Ah.”

“As well,” Mycroft says, “I have something for you.” He picks up a file sitting on the table beside his chair and passes it to Sherlock in the chair on the other side of the fireplace. “You requested this information some time ago. I’ve only just now solved the case. You’ll find conclusive proof in there.” He nods at the file folder. 

Sherlock takes it but doesn’t open it. “What is it? Proof of what?”

Mycroft folds his hands together. “The murder of Hamish William Watson. Unfortunately for him, he’d got into money laundering. The reasons seem self-explanatory: the Watson family was poor, his accounting firm was struggling and he stood to lose his job. He ended up crossing paths with the Morani crime family in Chicago. They offered him work and he was struggling badly enough that he didn’t look at it too closely. When he realised that he was laundering funds for a crime front, he wanted out. They responded by accusing him of skimming funds from them in the process of sanitising their finances. He hadn’t – as you’ll see there – but it was their standard way of ridding themselves of witnesses. A false accusation and a hit. They had requested a meeting in person to go over the figures. Naturally he would have wanted to clear his name out of fear alone. He went to the meeting, which the Chicago Police Department knew about, though they did not know at the time that it was he with whom the Moranis were meeting. He was seen leaving alone from a private residence in the Englewood Park area. Three blocks later, he was shot by a person who, according to his autopsy report, would have been standing six feet away from him and facing him directly. It’s unknown whether his assailant stepped out in front of him, got out of a vehicle, or was waiting around a corner, but given the timing of his meeting with the Moranis and their private suspicions, according to their exchange of letters, avoiding the conclusion of murder is difficult. Of course, at the time of Hamish Watson’s death, nothing was known about his employment with the Morani family. However, once my people found the letters detailing some of the work, plus the time and location of the meeting, that became clearer. I also had a look at the records of Smith & Bainbridge Accounting where Watson was employed, then obtained access to the materials left in his study after his death. His ex-wife was grudging but _did_ allow my people access.”

Sherlock nods, listening, then opens the file. Copies of the written correspondence are on the top, followed by photographs and police reports. He picks up the autopsy report and studies it, feeling Mycroft’s eyes on him. 

“Speaking of the autopsy,” Mycroft says, his tone obviously intended to lead. When Sherlock fails to take the bait, Mycroft sighs. “You should have told me. The shot. You had your suspicions from the first.”

Sherlock lowers the report and looks over. “Of what?” he asks, his tone guarded. 

“That it was a young Ms Morstan who performed the hit,” Mycroft says irritably. “Obvious enough: there are a number of unsolved murders in the US and abroad, mostly Russia, all performed the same way: a single shot to the inferior vena cava, always fatal after about twenty minutes.”

Sherlock frowns. “I did suspect,” he says, “but she told John in a letter that she was working for the Agency then.”

“What letter?” Mycroft asks. 

“A memory stick she gave him,” Sherlock says. “John gave it to me and asked me to read it for him and to only tell him what it said if I thought he really needed to know.”

Mycroft raises his thin eyebrows. “And in it, she detailed her criminal past in honesty and transparency, did she?” he asks. 

“It was a letter,” Sherlock says. “She told him some things, but never with any sort of factual verification.” He feels slightly wrong-footed; it hadn’t even occurred to him to disbelieve Mary’s letter. It fits, though: a mix of truths with half-truths, the latter seeming to strengthen the former. So cunning. And ruthlessly manipulative. 

“Then the bit about starting with the CIA was a lie,” Mycroft informs him. “You know that I worked with the Agency for a number of years. She was never an agent with them. Of course it’s possible that I didn’t know everyone, but you know that I _did_. She is a compulsive liar, Sherlock. Pathological, even. Possibly she wanted to justify her life choices to John – I assume the letter _was_ a bid to persuade him to forgive her?”

Sherlock shakes his head. “I’m not even sure,” he says. “It was a mixed message. In the end she confessed that her first professional hit was on someone John knew, but she didn’t tell him who it was. John had just told me that the shot that killed his father was identical to the shot that nearly killed me. It was no great leap.”

“And yet he took her back,” Mycroft muses. “The leverage of pregnancy must be greater than I even realised. Though of course, you didn’t tell John this.”

“No.”

“Nor did you explain to him, precisely, that you would not be returning from Serbia,” Mycroft adds. When Sherlock doesn’t respond, he presses. “ _Sherlock._ Did you tell him?”

“No,” Sherlock says tersely. The subject of John is still very painful. “I didn’t and I won’t. And neither will you.”

“He should know,” Mycroft says warningly. “He should know what you were prepared to do for him.”

“Perhaps, but it wouldn’t change anything,” Sherlock says dismissively. He looks into the fire and tries not to notice the hollowness in his chest. (It isn’t working.) 

Mycroft sighs. “I feel he should know,” he repeats.

Sherlock doesn’t acknowledge this. Trust Mycroft to want to meddle. “Just leave it alone,” he says, but it’s half-mumbled. He picks up his drink and takes a long sip. Mycroft has shrugged and fallen into an uncharacteristic silence. Sherlock lets him brood and closes his eyes, trying not to think or feel anything. 

***

It’s been four days since that conversation when Sherlock hears the downstairs door to Mycroft’s flat open. There are low voices, then his brother’s heavy tread on the polished stairs. A cursory knock at his door. “Yes?” The response is automatic, toneless. 

Mycroft opens the door, his expression mostly opaque. “You have a visitor,” he says curtly. 

Sherlock sits up, suddenly alert. “I thought I wasn’t permitted visitors.”

“I made an exception for this one.” Mycroft turns perpendicular, waiting in the doorway. “I’ve had the library cleared for your use.”

The look on his face makes Sherlock suspect he knows who the visitor is, his heart rate increasing in a manner that annoys him tremendously. (Stop it. There is no reason to hope that anything has changed in the slightest. It might not even be John. Apparently his mother and father believe him to be in Australia on a classified government assignment. Who else would Mycroft admit?) 

Sherlock makes his way into the library and goes to stand at the far end, occupying himself with reading Mycroft’s social invitations and trying hard to pretend to himself that he’s not listening for approaching footsteps with all of his might. The anticipated step comes, softer and lighter than Mycroft’s. The door closes. Sherlock closes his eyes briefly, then turns around. 

It’s John. (He knew it would be.) Their eyes meet from across the room, and the instant they do so, Sherlock knows that Mycroft told him, informed him that the Serbia assignment was not only likely to be fatal, but designed to be. John looks stricken. He swallows and tries to say something. He tries twice and fails both times, then gives it up and starts walking over. Sherlock waits, his heart in his throat, not knowing what to expect or say or do. John comes all the way over to him, hesitates for a moment, then says, with difficulty, “Mycroft told me.”

Sherlock attempts to swallow around the blockage in his throat. “What did he tell you?” he asks, his voice rasping slightly around it. 

“About Serbia,” John says. His voice isn’t quite even. He takes a deep breath. “That you weren’t coming back. That you knew you weren’t coming back when you said goodbye.”

Sherlock hesitates in turn, then makes himself say it. “No,” he admits, very reluctantly. “I didn’t… it wasn’t certain. Though it wasn’t likely that I would have survived.”

John’s brow condenses into a pained expression Sherlock is at a loss to interpret specifically. (Why this blind spot, with John? Why now, when he most needs to understand?) “You – ” he starts, his voice too loud, then stops himself. “You didn’t – Sher – ” He stops again, then launches himself at Sherlock without warning, giving rise to the momentary thought that John is about to attack him, but he quickly realises that it’s not that; John is hugging him fiercely, arms tight around Sherlock’s back. After a startled moment, Sherlock puts his arms around John, feeling ungainly and awkward. (John’s warmth is horribly welcome when it shouldn’t be. Mary won. John is not his to hold.) John’s back is heaving as he breathes and after another moment, Sherlock realises he is crying. 

He is at an utter loss as to how to respond. “I’m sorry,” he tries, the words fumbled and uncertain and completely inadequate.

“You’re – _sorry_ – ” John sounds incredulous, his mouth muffled against Sherlock’s shoulder. He moves away, still holding Sherlock by the upper arms, his fingers tight and angry. “Why did you _do_ that? Shoot Magnussen like that, in front of half of England? What the hell were you thinking?”

Sherlock stares at John’s wet eyes and face. “Don’t you know?” It’s too plain, too direct, but the words speak themselves before he can prevent it. If John doesn’t know this by now, there would be no point in trying to explain it to him. 

John’s jaw clenches, the muscles bunching at his mandibular joint. The knowledge is there on his face, in his defiant eyes. He knows, Sherlock thinks. He has to know. He must. “Don’t _leave_ me again,” he says. “For God’s sake, Sherlock – don’t you know I – ”

He stops and the unfinished question hangs between them unresolved. Sherlock’s eyes bore into his, wanting fiercely to know what it is that John will not permit himself to say. Is it what he suspects it is, what he longs to hear? He wants to hear it so badly. (Wants to kiss John, and the urge is inconvenient in the extreme – _timing_ , John would have said. But he can feel the kiss that was never realised on the twenty-first of December hovering between them, practically visible to the naked eye.) But John closes his mouth again, firmly, giving himself that frog-faced look of stony determination that he has perfected over the years. 

“Don’t leave me again,” he repeats, then brings a jacketed forearm to swipe angrily at his eyes. He turns and rushes out of the room, leaving Sherlock standing alone in the centre of it, the unformed question still trying to form on his lips. He has no idea how or what to feel or think about this. What is he supposed to make of it? (What was John going to say? He wants desperately to know.) John’s sudden departure leaves the room (and Sherlock) feeling emptier than it was before he entered it. 

When enough time has passed that it seems certain that John is not coming back, Sherlock returns listlessly to his room and locks himself in, staring blankly at the ceiling until night falls and sleep finally shuts off the silence screaming in his skull. 

***

There are no other visitors for the duration of his stay at Mycroft’s. After the two weeks have finished, Mycroft has a car take Sherlock back to Baker Street, with the parting adjuration to keep a low profile and stay out of media sight. Mrs Hudson cries when he comes back, but otherwise his arrival at home is unheralded. He wonders what Mycroft said to her, because she continues to bring tea in the morning but otherwise leaves him well alone. 

Three days after his arrival, Sherlock is sitting in his chair (ignoring the sofa), lost in drifting thought when the downstairs door opens quietly. His listens, and his entire body thrums with alertness: it’s John. (Why is he here? What could he possibly have to say that he didn’t say the last time they saw each other before he rushed out? Is it trouble with Mary, possibly?) Sherlock is on his feet, heart beating unpleasantly quickly, facing the doorway when John reaches it. 

He’s upset, Sherlock notes instantly, worried. Very upset. “John,” he says, his voice unsteady. “What is it?”

“I’m an idiot,” John blurts out. He takes two steps into the flat, heedless of the snow melting from his shoes. (John, who always fussed at Sherlock for doing that very thing.) “God, Sherlock, I’m such a – Mycroft told me, told me everything you know about my father, and Mary, and – I – I’m so sorry, Sherlock – after everything you’ve done – and everything that’s happened to you, and I – ”

He’s stumbling over his words, not making sense. Sherlock is alarmed. “Mycroft told you about – your father?” he repeats, that part standing out dangerously. “When? _Why_ did he tell you that?”

“I figured it out,” John says. “So I asked him. And when he told me, I knew that you must know, and he confirmed it. I think he was close to actually hitting me. I wanted to see you but all he would tell me was that you weren’t there any more. I begged – literally begged – and finally he said you were here. I was so afraid he’d sent you away after all, and I – ” John takes four long steps and stops in front of Sherlock, whose heart is in his throat. “Forgive me, Sherlock,” he says desperately. “ _Please_. Forgive me for going back to Mary. After everything you’ve done for me. I was – I scared myself, thought I didn’t know what I was doing or what I really wanted, but I know now – God, I know; I’ve always known how I felt about you, but I just couldn’t admit it, be honest with myself – I don’t deserve you, not after everything that’s happened, and then the last time I saw you and knew I’d come so close to losing you again forever, I almost – but I – ”

“Wait,” Sherlock interrupts, his heart beating so quickly that he feels he might lose consciousness. “What are you saying, John? Have you – have you come back?”

John nods, his face so filled with emotion that it hurts Sherlock to see it. “If you’ll have me,” he says hoarsely. “Sherlock – ”

Sherlock cuts him off, closing the space between them and (at last, at _last_ ) puts his arms around John’s shoulders and kisses him. John responds immediately, gasping like a swimmer drowning at sea, his entire frame wracked with emotion, his arms coming tightly around Sherlock’s back and throwing himself into the embrace the way he’s always thrown himself into everything – into danger, into trust, however unfounded, into every appetite, into base, core-deep sentiment, and Sherlock cannot absorb it quickly enough. Their mouths are open, John’s tongue seeking his and Sherlock shivers at its touch, his entire body coming to life from its listless ennui in the space of a heartbeat. He thought he knew what it felt to love, to be in love before this, but all of his unsated yearning has nothing when it comes to actually feeling John’s touch, his lips and hands and whole heart beating against his own like this. Sherlock is dizzy with it, still half-afraid that he’s about to pass out, but not wanting to miss a second of this, his being suffused in fiercer emotion than he knew himself capable of possessing. He is gasping into John’s mouth, as much the drowning swimmer as John is, clinging to him with every ounce of his strength. John kisses him again and again and again, and they should really talk some more, but that would mean letting go and Sherlock is actually afraid that John letting him go now would break him. It goes on for what feels like an age, their bodies swaying together, John’s hands moving over his back, stroking, reaching up to touch his face, supporting more of Sherlock’s weight than Sherlock himself is. 

When they finally part to catch their breath, Sherlock is embarrassed to find that his eyes are wet, but John’s are, too. “I love you,” Sherlock tells him, the unpractised words coming out sounding horribly awkward, but it doesn’t matter. If he hadn’t said it now, the words would have imploded within his battered chest. 

John’s jaw clenches at this and he swallows hard. “I figured that out, finally,” he says, his voice not quite breaking through a whisper. “After everything you’ve done – I figured you had to. And I don’t deserve it, Sherlock. I really don’t. But I love you, too. If you’ll have me – I’m yours. I mean it. I won’t leave you again. I promise.”

Sherlock’s vision swims. He hastily turns his head to the side and holds John as tightly to himself as he can. (It might be too tight. He is not in complete control of his limbs at the moment.) He hears his voice scrape over John’s name and John responds by holding him just as tightly, still apologising over and over again. After awhile, the questions start to rise to the surface. He pulls back very slightly. “What do you mean, you figured it out about your father?” he asks. 

John hasn’t let go. He turns his face into Sherlock’s neck and kisses his throat. “I don’t want to talk about it now. I just – I finally put two and two together on my own,” he says, lips brushing Sherlock’s skin. “I thought it maybe wasn’t coincidence that those two shots were basically identical. Once I thought of it, I thought it had to be true, that it’s the only thing that Mary could have done that she might have thought even worse than shooting you. So I asked Mycroft, and he confirmed it. He told me about the rest, but said I should ask you about it anyway. He also made sure that I knew that you shot Magnussen in front of witnesses just to save my marriage and my future, so that I wouldn’t shoot him myself, and so that you would take the full blame for it, leaving me to my wife and child and future.” He kisses Sherlock’s neck again, then his ear. 

Sherlock shivers, his fingers pushing mindlessly into John’s hair the way he’s wanted to do for so long and it’s so soft, in direct contradiction to John’s occasional bouts of anger and impatience. He’s so gentle now, though, his mouth and hands touching Sherlock with infinite amounts of care and affection. “I tried to,” he says, though John is thoroughly distracting him. 

John straightens up and finds Sherlock’s eyes with his own. “Even though it meant giving up everything – absolutely _everything_ , including your own life,” he says, as though positing a theory. “All for me. After you had already jumped off a hospital to save me, and after I had left you for the woman who shot you. Who you knew had shot my father. You didn’t tell me just so that I would have a chance to be happy.”

Sherlock blinks. John’s tone started out slightly uncertain but finished fierce and demanding and it seems he has no choice but to acknowledge the statement, confirm the hypothesis. “Yes.”

John shakes his head. “You see why I don’t deserve you.”

“I don’t think it’s about deserving,” Sherlock says, somewhat uncertain, himself. 

“I hope not, because – ” John stops himself. “Look, Sherlock – I’m still totally overwhelmed by that, that you would do all of that for me, especially when I – but you made one mistake.”

(More than one, Sherlock thinks, but doesn’t say.) “What?” he asks, eyes searching John’s. 

John puts both hands on his face but doesn’t kiss him. “I could never be happy without you, you know,” he says, his voice so full of uncharacteristic tenderness that it shakes Sherlock to the core of his being. “You thought you could just take yourself out of the equation. You would do anything for me, but you don’t even have the smallest concept of how important you are to me. I couldn’t even go without you for a month, and that should have been the happiest month of my life, newly married, a baby on the way and a whole future with my wife, my best friend miraculously back from the dead. And I was miserable.”

Sherlock blinks and doesn’t know what to say. “John…”

John smiles and shakes his head again. “I always loved you, you know. I just couldn’t admit it to myself. I’m sorry, Sherlock. It’s been so – putting you through all of that – although I didn’t know, you know. I didn’t realise that you felt the same way. I started getting an inkling of it when you told me why you’d jumped that day. I wish I had known earlier. I wish I’d been honest with myself, only I never thought it was even a possibility, with us. I didn’t think you wanted that.”

“I do want it,” Sherlock says, horribly honest, and John’s smile is so beautiful that it makes his chest ache. 

“I know,” he says, and spares Sherlock having to answer by kissing him again. It’s wonderful. It’s so wonderful that Sherlock is afraid of how good it is, how perfect. Surely something will happen and it will all dissolve again. He’ll say something wrong and John will change his mind and leave again. (But he promised, he reminds himself. John wouldn’t break his promise.) 

“Are you really going to stay?” he asks, the next time there’s an opportunity to speak. 

“I promised, didn’t I?” John says, as though reading his mind, thumb stroking over his cheek. 

Sherlock answers with another question, hesitating slightly before asking it. “Does Mary know?”

John’s own hesitation speaks volumes. “Not yet,” he says, wincing a bit. “I don’t want to think about that yet. I haven’t figured out how I’m going to deal with that. It was more important to me to see you, get all this sorted out. But I’m not leaving you. You have my word.”

Sherlock listens to this, lets the words resonate in his mind for a moment, then nods his acceptance. “All right,” he says. He’s wearing his pyjamas and his old, blue silk dressing gown, the one with the bullet hole in the right sleeve, and wishes he looked a bit nicer. This is so important, and it had to happen while he isn’t dressed. It doesn’t seem to matter to John, though, who is wearing nothing nicer than his wet shoes, jeans, black coat, and a well-worn t-shirt beneath it. 

John smiles at him in seeming relief. He steps away slightly and takes off his coat, then moves closer again, into the circle of Sherlock’s arms, and they’re kissing again. There’s more heat to it now, and John is pushing the arms of Sherlock’s dressing gown to the floor, the warmth of his chest and abdomen seeping through their t-shirts and working its way through Sherlock’s entire frame. John is kissing him with the confidence of experience (experience that Sherlock envies now more than ever before), his tongue pushing into Sherlock’s and Sherlock decides to forgo any other questions he might still have about the logistics of their relationship and just go with it. All of those times when the tension has risen between them, or in Sherlock alone, coiling up through his limbs and snaking through his belly to settle low in his pelvis returns now as he feels himself harden in his flimsy pyjama pants. John’s hands move lower, cupping over his arse and pulling Sherlock even closer, his penis pressing against John’s body and even through the thickness of John’s jeans, he can feel his answering arousal. John lifts off the kiss for a moment to say, “That night, on the sofa – I almost kissed you.”

“I know,” Sherlock says, his eyes closed. “I wish you had. I wanted you to.”

“I was too stupid. Too afraid. Too stuck in trying to want something I didn’t want. But I wanted to – badly,” John says, and closes his warm mouth over Sherlock’s right ear. “I want you,” he whispers after. “I’ve wanted you for so long. I just couldn’t admit it to myself. I’m such an idiot.”

“Stop saying that,” Sherlock orders, his lips in John’s hair. “It doesn’t matter any more. You’re here.”

He feels John nod. “I’m here,” he agrees, pulling away to look up into Sherlock’s eyes and then kissing him again. 

They stop talking then. John’s hands are stroking over his body, his untouched skin, pushing up under his t-shirt and breathing into his neck and chest as though everything that his fingers touch is nothing short of a miracle to him. Sherlock holds on and tries to breathe and touch as much as John as he possibly can at once until John spares him and hauls the t-shirt off over his head. 

“Touch me,” he commands, and Sherlock’s fingers hasten to comply, gathering data into the grey matter in his fingertips, exploring the rough skin of the scar where the bullet burst through John’s flesh and revelling in the very proximity, in having John within the circle of his arms, proving his love tangibly. He can hear himself gasping and it’s ungainly and ridiculous but he is not entirely in control of himself at the moment. (Surely John will understand.)

He moans when John pushes past the waistband of his pyjama pants to grip his arse with his bare hands, and when John murmurs _Do you like that?_ against his neck, all he can do is nod helplessly, bucking closer. John pulls the worn t-shirt over Sherlock’s head and drops it to the floor, his mouth moving to Sherlock’s chest, the stiff peak of a nipple. “John,” he manages, the words in his mouth at war with the stiffness beginning to leak into his trousers, but feeling he should offer some sort of warning. “I’m not – I’ve never – ”

“Shh. It’s all right. I know,” John tells him, claiming his mouth again after for a long moment, then saying it again. “It’s fine.”

“I don’t know how to – ”

“I’ve never done this, either. Not with a bloke. We’ll sort it out,” John says, smiling, his eyes full of dark promise that Sherlock can feel in his very testicles. John moves Sherlock’s hand to the button of his jeans. “Take these off me, would you?”

(Ah, artfully done, John, Sherlock thinks, his fingers already complying, both of them looking down to watch.) A suggestion made with enough authority that if Sherlock turns out to be the submissive type, it will prompt his desire to obey, yet framed as a suggestion so that he can still feel in control, if that’s what he wants. Sherlock has, however, no relevant experience in this area and is feeling is, feeling uncertain and slightly ashamed. He’d never thought this would be necessary data, useful for anything he would need. (How very wrong he was.) He will have no choice but to follow John blindly into this, his own desire too clumsy a tool to provide adequate information as to precisely how to proceed. He gets the zip undone around the bulge of John’s erection and has to swallow the saliva that’s gathered in his mouth meanwhile. The jeans slide down and John steps out of them and kicks them away. 

“Now you,” he says, and somehow, together, they get Sherlock’s pyjama pants off him. 

And there they are, standing in front of each other, nude and hard and _John has promised to stay._ This one fact provides approximately ninety-eight percent of the assurance Sherlock otherwise lacks. It makes up for much. Sherlock drinks in the sight of John, his eyes hungry, and doesn’t know how to start. 

John – clever John – seems to know what he’s thinking. He smiles at Sherlock, forgiving his lack of direction, and reaches for him, closing a hand around his erection. Sherlock inhales sharply and forgets how to exhale. His eyes go to John’s hand around his penis, circling tightly and beginning to rub, and vertigo rises around his face like a fog. 

“Breathe,” John tells him, and kisses him on the collarbone as Sherlock gasps into his hair. John’s other hand finds his and places it on his own penis and it’s as though Sherlock has always known how it would feel, always known this inherent, important thing about John. It fits his palm perfectly. Sherlock takes another breath and attempts to focus on John rather than on the intensity of pleasure twisting tightly in his gut. It’s distracting, though; he finds he can’t quite manage to focus on both things at once, but John doesn’t seem to care that the motion of Sherlock’s hand on him is stuttering and irregular. He appears to be concentrating on working Sherlock into a frenzy and it’s working; Sherlock can hardly breathe, sucking in lungfuls of air that get suspended and start to burn within his chest as John pumps his fist over Sherlock’s hard, leaking penis, the pleasure radiating outward throughout his pelvis, into his bones. “Breathe,” John says again, the word only a slip of warm breath on his part, his hand tightening, gaining speed. 

Suddenly it’s about to spike and Sherlock panics. “Stop!” He swallows hard, willing away the orgasm, staving it off, his fingers closing like a vice around John’s wrist. 

John looks confused. “Is it… too much, or…?”

Sherlock nods, breathing heavily. “Just – just give me a moment,” he says, panting. “I want – ”

“Yes?” John’s eyes are half-lidded. “Tell me what you want.”

“Just – this.” Sherlock tightens his grasp again and is rewarded by John’s heartfelt groan, the miniscule movements of his hips as he fights himself not to thrust into Sherlock’s fist. John puts both hands on Sherlock’s biceps and closes his eyes. Sherlock locks his other forearm around John’s back and bends to kiss him again. John kisses back but breaks it off to pant against Sherlock’s chin, coming rapidly undone. Sherlock wonders if he’s going to ejaculate but then John puts a hand on Sherlock’s, gentler than Sherlock did. 

“I want to taste you,” he murmurs. “Please, Sherlock. Let me try it with my mouth.”

A frisson of anticipation skates down Sherlock’s spine and his erection twitches visibly at the very suggestion. He manages to nod his agreement and then John drops to his knees without further exchange. He puts his mouth around Sherlock’s penis without warning and Sherlock cries out despite himself and his knees give way, buckling under the intensity of the pleasure.

John makes an alarmed sound and catches him around the waist, strong, small hands guiding him down onto his back, and then he’s crawling between Sherlock’s thighs and doing it again and the sheer amount of pleasure is unbelievable. Immeasurable. Unquantifiable. John’s mouth is hot and wet and strong all around him, his lips and tongue pressing firmly into the column of hard flesh and Sherlock feels he could actually die. It feels better than anything he’s ever felt before, pleasure spiralling through his belly and out of him, into the air. And yet he’s overly conscious of the thought that possibly he isn’t clean enough; he’d hardly been expecting this to happen. He’s quite fastidious concerning his personal hygiene, but – if John somehow finds him disgusting, it will make him shrivel into a ball and want to die. John reaches up a hand and rubs Sherlock’s right nipple, rubs over his chest and stomach, his mouth bobbing and sucking obscenely the entire time. Sherlock can feel it beginning, the low ache of arousal so intense that he thinks he may fly apart at the moment of his orgasm. He pushes at John’s head, fingers tangling in his short hair, and pulls himself out of the glorious harbour of John’s mouth. He doesn’t want to have to explain why he needs to stop again, when he’s so close – but he pulls John up onto himself, kissing him and wrapping a hand around his unflagging erection and stroking him in long, hard strokes. John makes no objection, moaning freely into his mouth, hips pushing forward into the circle of Sherlock’s palm, so wet now that the slickness eases the slide of flesh-on-flesh. 

John is humping his fist without hesitation, but then stops, prying at Sherlock’s fingers and getting his erection next to Sherlock’s, nodding jerky approval when Sherlock closes his hand over John’s around both of them. “Now,” John says, his voice rough with desire. “Together.” 

The friction of his penis against Sherlock’s is positive ungodly. Sherlock can hear himself gasping and panting and moaning, unable to contain himself, to control his voice. He’s very close, but he doesn’t want to fall over that edge, fall apart in John’s arms, making a mess and – worse – coming unravelled in front of him. But if John wants to – the very thought of witnessing John’s orgasm is incredibly stimulating. It’s not going to take long – John is thrusting rhythmically into their joint hands and groaning Sherlock’s name, but then he opens his eyes, looking straight into Sherlock’s. Without saying a word he seems to understand. He falls back, pulling Sherlock over onto him, letting go of their erections. Instead, he puts both hands on Sherlock’s arse and begins to grind against him, their penises trapped between their abdomens, and suddenly it’s more than Sherlock can take. His body is moving of its own volition, rocking and thrusting against John, against his penis, moaning helplessly, and John is murmuring filthy encouragement. 

“Oh God, yes – yes, just like – oh fuck, fuck, _fuck_ – !” John’s voice cuts out as his penis erupts between them, hot liquid warmth pooling on his chest and Sherlock’s and Sherlock is still rutting against him, John’s hands pulling apart the cheeks of his arse as he thrusts like an animal, unable to stop himself this time. He hears his voice rising in pitch and then his thighs are clamping hard around John’s. “Let go – for me, Sherlock – ” John says breathily, still panting, and Sherlock loses control of himself entirely. The orgasm barrels through him with the strength of a waterfall, jerking out of him in gushes, hard. He doesn’t know how many times the ejaculate spurts between their bodies – seven or eight times at the least. (Stray memory of the effects of delayed orgasm clicks.) John is cursing and marvelling at it but Sherlock can barely hear it over the rushing in his ears, his body trembling as every last ounce of pleasure is wrung from him in twisting clenches from his testicles and throughout his entire torso, his arms and legs shaking with it. He’s never come in front of anyone before and it feels simultaneously humiliating and somehow liberating. And it was always going to be John if it was anyone. (He has always known this.)

When it’s finally finished, Sherlock is trembling and weak, collapsed facedown on John’s shoulder, the sticky mess wet between their bodies, and John’s hands are smoothing up and down his back, soothing him almost as though he were a child, hot kisses pressed to his forehead, and then there are fingers in his hair again, at last, and Sherlock’s eyes are wet and mercifully hidden from sight. He didn’t know it would be like this. Not truly. He’d known he wanted to touch John with his hands, his lips and tongue. He’d known how desperately he’d wanted to kiss him, but no fantasy could have prepared him for this. He feels as though his body and self lie in pieces scattered around the room from the explosion of his orgasm, fragile and frail, easily picked up and examined and discarded. 

But John is holding him as though Sherlock could not be more valuable to him, more exquisitely precious, his touch gentler than Sherlock had known it could be. “I love you,” John tells him again, his voice much rougher than usual. “God, I love you. You know that, right? You know that. How much.”

Sherlock finds his voice at last, nodding into John’s neck. “I love you,” he says back, his voice muffled. “I would do anything for you.”

John gives a laugh that chokes off into something else. “I know that,” he says. “I can’t believe you took me back.”

Sherlock contemplates this for a moment or two, then lifts his face at last to look John in the eye. He’s startled to see that John’s eyes are damp, too. “I never thought you would come back,” he says. “That day, on the sofa… I thought it was over. Any chance of – this. I knew you were going to leave then.”

John swallows hard and touches his face, strokes the damp hair back from his forehead. “I’m sorry, Sherlock. So sorry.”

“Please stop saying that. You’re here now.”

John smiles at this, and it changes his entire face. Sherlock knows that he has never in his life seen anything that beautiful. (How could he have ever thought John ordinary?) “Can we go to bed?” he asks hopefully. 

Sherlock nods. It doesn’t matter what time it is. It could be nine in the morning for all he cares. Being with John is all that matters. Not Mycroft, not Mary, not anyone. Only John. “Yes,” he says, willing his voice to come out evenly. “Let’s do that.”

***

When he wakes, Sherlock is momentarily confused by the tangle of limbs he finds himself in. Then the previous night comes back to him: John pushed him gently into his own bed, then followed him in and pulled the blankets around them both, cocooning them into a world that consisted of only the two of them, or so it had felt to Sherlock’s hazy, post-orgasmic mind. He doesn’t even think they spoke, vague memories of John’s lips on his, their limbs slotted together, lying semi-curled face to face, John’s arms around him. Now he blinks sleep from his eyes and determines from the pearly grey light coming in the window that it’s not yet six. He has no idea what time it was when John arrived last night or how much time they spent kissing and… the rest of it. Sherlock’s cheeks flush thinking of it and he notices then that his penis is hardening already. He glances at John’s sleeping face, then down between them and sees that John is mostly erect, too. 

(He wants to touch John. Are there rules about this, when the other person is sleeping? Best check: he would never forgive himself for destroying this _now_ , not after all of the rest of it.) “John.” His voice is scratchy with sleep. John doesn’t stir and he tries again, kissing the hollow of John’s throat. “John.”

He feels John wake, hears the change in the rhythm of his breathing, his body stretching, eyes blinking and opening, focusing on Sherlock. He blinks twice more and smiles. Not surprised to find himself here, then. (Good. Sherlock is slightly relieved.) “Morning,” he says, and yawns, still smiling after. 

Sherlock wants to ask, but John is kissing him, slight morning breath and scrape of stubble and all, and Sherlock finds that he doesn’t care about morning breath, even if he’s slightly self-conscious about his own. And he quite likes the stubble. John doesn’t appear bothered, the kiss growing as he wakes, which seems to be a very fast process. He presses forward into Sherlock, their penises touching and he makes a noise of pleased surprise in his throat. Sherlock runs his hand down John’s side and onto the muscled curve of his arse instinctively. Perhaps bodies just know these things, know how to touch, how to please. When they break apart, Sherlock is breathless and willing to wager that his pupils are dilated in the extreme. “Can I touch you?” he asks. (He sounds like a child. Try again. More assertive.) “I want to touch you.”

John gives him the same relaxed, half-lidded smile that Sherlock hasn’t seen since the night of his stag do, shrugging happily. “Be my guest,” he says, in tones that suggest he would like this very much, indeed. 

Sherlock doesn’t know where to begin, but leans forward to kiss the base of John’s neck again, fingers squeezing John’s arse cheek. “I don’t know what I’m doing,” he admits to John’s chest. 

John puts his fingers in Sherlock’s hair. “It’s fine,” he assures him. “It’s not rocket science. You’ll deduce what I like. And I’ll tell you if you’re not sure.”

“Is it always like this?” Sherlock asks, looking up at him. “Do you always… not know, at first?”

“At first,” John agrees. He bends forward to kiss the top of Sherlock’s head. “But it won’t be a mystery to you for long, genius. You’ll have me completely figured out within a week, maximum.”

“I doubt that,” Sherlock says, and means it. He tries another kiss between John’s well-defined pectoral muscles, then rubs his tongue over John’s right nipple. John shivers at that and Sherlock repeats it, pleased. 

“Good,” John praises, murmuring. “See?”

Encouraged, Sherlock tries the other, which necessitates getting John onto his back. From there he works his way southward, his hands running over John’s firmly-muscled legs, the softness of his belly, the dip of his navel, the faint, fuzzy line of hair leading to his penis. Sherlock examines him everywhere, gaining confidence as he goes. The backs of John’s knees, the crease of his pelvic bone, the arches of his feet and the bony protrusions of his ankles. He puts his hands and mouth everywhere, tasting, testing for reactions, repeating to verify results, then finally, when John is beginning to sound a touch desperate, passes his tongue over the peculiar, delicately crinkled skin of his testicles before sliding his lips gently over them. Funny, this – holding John’s very masculinity in his mouth: this is trust. John, who trusts only one person in the world, even after Sherlock let him down spectacularly at Appledore, will allow him to have his testicles in his very mouth. It’s extraordinary. “You’re extraordinary,” Sherlock says aloud, looking up at John, suddenly in awe of this, of John’s blatant trust in allowing him to do this. 

John smiles a smile so lovely that it hurts to see it. “Makes two of us, then,” he says, instead of denying it. 

Sherlock smiles back. Then, his eyes not leaving John’s, he takes John’s penis and puts it in his mouth. 

John’s reaction is immediate, a jolt of energy running through his entire body, fists balling instantly into the sheets. “Fuck,” he says, chest heaving. 

Sherlock is pleased. He tries taking in more of it, marvelling at the way the foreskin slides over the head, the slit leaking bitter/salty fluid when he tentatively touches his tongue to it, the way the skin of the shaft moves under his fingers. He keeps his teeth covered and finds a rhythm, stopping every so often to lick at John’s testicles again, using his hand to keep the rhythm from breaking. John is moaning and cursing and Sherlock loves it, hearing such a vocal reaction to confirm that he’s on the right track. John puts his feet on Sherlock’s arse and kneads it with his toes, which makes Sherlock rub himself a bit less surreptitiously against the sheets. Finally John says his name warningly and comes with his hands in Sherlock’s disordered hair, semen dribbling out the corner of Sherlock’s mouth as he attempts to swallow it all down. And then John is hauling him up and licking at his chin and neck, Sherlock’s penis embarrassingly hard between them. 

“What do you want?” John asks, his tone louche and unbearably sexy in his satisfaction and Sherlock doesn’t know what the options are. “I could do that,” John offers, meaning the same thing that Sherlock just did. “Since you wouldn’t let me finish you off that way last night…?”

At this point, Sherlock is so aroused that he really couldn’t care, and says so. John laughs and lazily pushes him onto his back. 

“Watch,” he says, so Sherlock props himself up onto his elbows and watches as John places himself in the vee of Sherlock’s sprawled legs and sucks him down almost to the base in one go. It’s visually almost more stimulation than Sherlock can take, seeing himself buried in John’s mouth like this, and physically it’s the same, his back arching off the bed, fingers grasping at the sheets in a desperate need to grip something, anything. John must have sensed that he was already very aroused; he’s going faster than he was yesterday, his rhythm unfaltering and steady. Sherlock’s head drops back, unplanned sounds escaping from his throat unchecked, and then John reaches for his hand and puts it on top of his head, encouraging him. Sherlock can’t quite help himself, anyway – his pelvis is fighting upward off the sheets, straining to get deeper. John shifts a little, lifting one of Sherlock’s legs and putting it over his shoulder, the hand that was tugging gently at Sherlock’s testicles probing further back and Sherlock is just about to say something in alarm when John simultaneously pushes one finger into his arse while plunging his mouth down to the base of Sherlock’s penis and the combined stimulation is too much – Sherlock cries out hoarsely and comes down John’s throat, pleasure exploding in his gut, his anus contracting over and over again around John’s finger as his penis discharges itself wetly into John’s mouth. 

When it’s over, he slumps backward, his leg still over John’s shoulder, panting hard and seeing stars behind his eyes. “God,” he says, breathing hard. “That was – amazing.”

John sounds pleased with himself and withdraws his finger. “Sorry about the finger,” he says, not sounding as if he means it at all as he spreads himself over Sherlock’s torso again. 

“Unhygienic,” Sherlock manages, still fighting for breath, but John only kisses his throat and tells him to shut up, so he does. (He has never known happiness like this before. Never in thirty-seven years. What was he doing before this? Subsisting, nothing more.)

After awhile, they calm themselves and John curls himself around Sherlock again. He is vastly more affectionate than Sherlock would have suspected, given his often standoffish manner. “You once had a severed head sitting in the fridge,” John says, his face mashed into Sherlock’s chest. “Just sitting there, no plastic, no pan beneath it, nothing.”

“What’s your point?” Sherlock asks, his eyes closed. 

John snorts. “‘Unhygienic’.”

“Well, it _was_.”

John turns his head and lowers his mouth to Sherlock’s nipple, rubbing the other with his fingers, smirking when Sherlock inhales deeply. “Did it feel good?” he asks, though he clearly already knows the answer. 

Sherlock merely smiles and slides his fingers into John’s hair, but John makes a questioning sound, prompting an answer. “You know it did,” Sherlock says. In response, John moves up so that their faces are side by side and puts a hand on Sherlock’s, turning it to kiss him again and Sherlock allows it, revelling in it, in John. He has never in all his life felt – or been – so intimate with another person. It’s as though there was a perfectly John-shaped gap within him for all his life that John is now filling and he feels as though there is nothing else he could want. He has never in his life felt this way before and it is… remarkable. Wonderful. But they do have to talk. “John,” he says, after awhile, reluctant to stop the cycle of lazy kisses and unhurried caresses. 

John opens his eyes. “Hmm?”

“Tell me more,” Sherlock requests. “About Mary and – your father. What made you realise what she had done, and when and how. All of that.” What you’re going to do next, he doesn’t add, also omitting the question of John’s child for the time being. “I thought that things were all right with her. I mean, you forgave her. Went back to her.”

“Went back to her,” John agrees. “But did I forgive her? I don’t think I did. I certainly didn’t say that.”

Sherlock waits. This is not an answer. 

John sighs. He props himself up onto one elbow, his other hand still trailing over Sherlock’s abdomen. “Listen,” he says. “The main reason I went back was for the baby. I never stopped being angry with Mary. As I said back in autumn, her reasons for having shot you and lied me to all that time just weren’t good enough. I never bought it. Even if we take you completely out of the equation, it just wasn’t going to work again. But I felt like I had to go back. The thing is, once I realised everything else and stacked everything that you’ve done for me against everything Mary’s done _to_ me, to us, there was no question. And besides which, I told you I’ve always known, on some level, how I felt about you. I didn’t really need the extra complication of all of that, of what I felt for you or the fact that I’ve always known on some level that it was there. It was never supposed to come up to the surface. The night we nearly kissed, I panicked. I’m sorry.”

Sherlock shakes his head on the pillow. “Never mind that. Go on.”

John looks down between them, his brow troubled. “It has to be said,” he says, frowning. “I never wanted to be gay, to be seen that way. It was an affront to my entire sense of self, somehow. I’ve never been attracted to another man before, not really. With you, it was instant, right from the start. I always told myself it was something else, that I was just fascinated by your brain or something, but that never really flew when it was your arse I was staring at or whatever. I just kept denying it and shoving it down and out of sight. I kept thinking that if I just channelled it into something else, made sure I had a girlfriend to remind myself of everything I like about women, I could keep it under control. After Jeannette, I saw how futile that was and just gave it up.”

“Which one was Jeannette?” Sherlock asks. The old resentment has faded, at last. 

“The boring teacher,” John says, the corner of his lip quirking into a smile. “She really _was_ boring.”

“I know.” Sherlock smirks at him. 

“Prat,” John says, but it’s fond. “They could never measure up to you. None of them, including Mary. I always used to sort of wish you were just jealous, but I could never be sure. I was never at all sure that you were even capable of feeling this way about anyone, Sherlock.”

Sherlock looks down at John’s fingers on his belly. “Neither was I,” he says, the admission somehow difficult. 

John bends and kisses him gently, bringing the hand up to his face. “But you are,” he says. “God, you are. And it’s amazing.”

Sherlock pulls John closer and kisses him again, opening his lips to it, still wanting John so much that he finds it unfathomable, that his hunger for him only seems to grow with its satisfaction. John doesn’t resist, rolling half onto him and letting it go on for several long minutes. When they break apart again, Sherlock is short of breath and still needing more data, needing to understand how and why this is finally happening. “So what happened?” he asks. “When did you make the connection between Mary and your father? How did that lead to – this?” 

John exhales deeply (is he frustrated?) and flops over onto his back. He folds his arms beneath his head and inhales through his nose the way he does when he’s thinking. (How is everything about him to utterly entrancing? Sherlock is almost embarrassed by his own thought and has the bare wit to realise that he is completely infatuated.) “Well,” he says, “as I said last night, the similarity between my father’s shot and yours always bothered me. I have to say that the possibility had been there in the back of my mind all through the autumn, but I never wanted it say it out loud. As though saying it would have made it be true for sure. It all just accumulated, Sherlock. I don’t know, exactly, but nearly losing you again was the worst part. When your brother told me that you wouldn’t have survived the mission in Serbia, I didn’t even know what to do with myself. All I knew was that I had to see you, and I was so close to snapping through my own restrictions then and just telling you that you’re the most important thing in the world to me. And to know that you would have given up everything, even your very life for me – I didn’t know what to do with it. I was only going through the actions with Mary already. I didn’t even know if I still loved her or not. I only knew that I’d given her my word. No matter what she’d said or done, or how she’d broken her own by lying to me every minute we’d been together, I’d still made my own vows. And there’s a child. But when I finally went to your brother and asked him about my father. He told me everything that he knows, even offered to send me a copy of the file. Good of him. But yeah, that was the tipping point.” 

He turns onto his side again and lays his head on Sherlock’s chest. Sherlock touches his hair, his hand smoothing over it. “I don’t understand,” he says. “Why then and not before?”

“I had trusted you with the memory stick,” John says, his arm around Sherlock’s bare torso, his leg winding over and around Sherlock’s possessively. “I gave you the information and left you to decide whether or not to tell me. I knew you would know whether or not I would want to know. You knew what a huge thing it was – Mary being the one who killed my dad – but you made the conscious choice not to tell me just so that there would be some chance for me to still have a life to go back to when you left me this time. All while you were going to sacrifice your own. You know my temper. You knew I had the gun. You knew there was a chance I would snap and shoot Magnussen myself – so you did it for me. You took all the pressure off Mary and let me burn her secrets and were about to take what you knew to your grave. You love me _that_ much.”

Sherlock isn’t entirely clear on how to respond to this. John looks up at him then, and Sherlock realises that he isn’t looking for confirmation: he’s speaking as though this is unquestioned fact. “And that – was enough?” he asks, slightly uncertain. 

John gives a huff of laughter and shakes his head. “Enough?” he repeats. “Jesus, Sherlock. It’s more than – it’s everything. It’s absolutely everything. And how, _how_ could I possibly be expected to choose you over Mary, to not love you back for that – when I’d loved you all along, anyway? Tell me that.”

Sherlock blinks and doesn’t know what to say. It’s true, what John’s said. Mycroft is wrong: John _does_ understand, does appreciate it. “Last time I ‘died’, I left you to grieve for two years,” he says slowly. “I didn’t want to do that to you again. And – ” He stops, not sure how to word this. “I didn’t have anything else to stay for, once you had gone.”

John lifts his head and crawls onto him, taking Sherlock’s face in his hands. “I love you,” he says, his eyes and face filled with intensity. “I will never leave you again. I swear it.”

Sherlock reaches for him and pulls him down and thinks that he could die now – but this time, without a single regret.

***

The next two days go by like scenes from someone else’s life. Sherlock has never laughed so much, never felt so full, never been as alive. Food tastes better, he sleeps more deeply, and is more aware of his own body than he’s ever been before. It sounds ridiculous even in his own head, but everything feels new with John here, somehow more special than it was before. Sex doesn’t just transform things, he knows, but being loved might. And it seems that John has decided to love him fiercely, throwing himself headfirst into their new however-one-puts-it. Their _this_. They didn’t even leave the flat the whole of the second day. John is a heady mix of patient and aggressive in bed and Sherlock feels himself caught in the vortex of it and deliriously happy. 

It’s now the third night since John came back and they’ve just finished watching a movie together. Sherlock’s head is in John’s lap and John has been playing with his hair and massaging his scalp until Sherlock is all but purring, half-hypnotised and entirely content. The only niggling question on the horizon is the fact that John still hasn’t told Mary. She has texted him numerous times, he knows, but John doesn’t want to talk about it and this once, Sherlock refuses to pry. Not when John trusts him so completely; he simply cannot jeopardise that confidence. She’s also called several times and John has ignored every one of her calls. 

The closing credits are rolling by, the music reprising the main action theme to a slower tempo, and Sherlock feels the need to ask well up, pushing itself out his mouth. “John.”

“Mmm?”

“Mary,” Sherlock says, and decides to stop, just leave the name there, the question implied. 

John sighs, as Sherlock knew he would. “I know,” he says, not pushing back this time. “I need to tell her. I will. I just – I don’t know, I just wanted to give us a few days to – establish ourselves, I suppose. I don’t imagine she’ll take it well, and we’ll have to talk about the baby – she’s due in two weeks – and it could be rocky. I wanted to make sure that you and I had built up at least a bit of a foundation before I throw us into that particular storm. Does that make sense?”

Sherlock thinks about this. “Yes.” Then, “Do you think we’ve done that? Built a foundation? It hasn’t been very long yet.”

“I know,” John agrees. “But yes, I think so. It’s important to you, though, isn’t it.” It isn’t a question. “That I break it off with her officially. You won’t feel like I’m completely yours until I do, no matter what I say or promise.”

“No,” Sherlock says, frowning. “That isn’t true. I believe you.”

“But you don’t feel it completely, because I _am_ still married,” John says. “It’s okay. I get it. I would feel the same way. I’ll do it tomorrow. Is that soon enough?”

“Yes,” Sherlock says, feeling slightly chastened, as though he’s forced John’s hand in this. 

But John bends over him. “Then, as long as we’re waiting for that to happen, let me show you how much I belong to you. Let’s go to bed. Tonight, I want to feel you in me, inside me, feel you claim me.”

Sherlock feels a flush bloom on his cheeks, soaking down his chest and into his pyjama pants. “John.” It’s hoarse, his arousal immediate. John rubs a hand over his chest and down to cup him through the thin material of his pants and Sherlock reaches for him, pulling his face down. The kiss is heavy and wet and by the time it’s finished, Sherlock is half in John’s lap, coiled around him. John bulls him down the corridor into the bedroom, impatient, but Sherlock is just as impatient this time, crowding him against the back of the door. His pelvis fights against John’s, John’s hands gripping his arse. 

They haven’t done this before. They’ve touched each other with their hands and mouths and rubbed themselves together in every room of the flat, the shower, John’s old room. Even Mrs Hudson’s kitchen the previous day when they’d gone down to tell her. She’d run out of milk and gone to the café to get some more for the tea and they’d touched each other under the table, unable to wait until later, John silently snickering at Sherlock’s discomfort as they spent the rest of the visit with a mess in their underclothes. It hadn’t mattered. John’s body seems to draw his hands like magnets and Sherlock can’t seem to stop touching it. Perhaps it’s merely an attempt to compensate for lost time, but Sherlock’s appetite for John’s touch continues to grow, unsated. And the thought of entering his body, actually being inside him, is a concept so alluring he can barely wrap his mind around it. 

The pyjamas are shed rapidly and John searches the drawer of his nightstand for the lubricant he knows is there. He finds it and comes to join Sherlock on the bed, turning to face him, pulling Sherlock close, their legs twining together. John’s hand is on his penis, stroking it roughly into full hardness and Sherlock reaches down to do the same to John. John is kissing him, biting at his lips and chin. (He loves it when John is a bit rough like this.) “You like the thought of doing this,” John murmurs, lips and teeth on Sherlock’s jaw now. “You like the thought of being inside me. Don’t you.”

Sherlock sucks in a deep breath and nods. “But I don’t – I know that I should prepare you – ”

John opens his eyes. “Yes,” he says. “But I’ve… well, I’ve, er, always liked a bit of that. I have a, um, a device. A toy. I’ve never had the real thing up there, but I’m assuming it’s going to be fine.”

The thought of John doing this to himself is momentarily arresting. Sherlock has to swallow down the saliva that accumulates in his mouth over the mental image. “Does Mary know you have it?” he asks without thinking. (Oh. Insensitive, possibly.) 

John gives a bark of laughter. “Are you kidding? She already thought you and I were too close! That would have confirmed to her without doubt that I was interested in being much more than your best friend!”

“Ah.” Sherlock decides to close his mouth and stop spoiling the mood. 

John smiles at him as though he knows exactly what Sherlock was thinking. “I only mentioned it because I don’t want you thinking you’re going to hurt me,” he says, kissing Sherlock’s throat (Sherlock loves this). “I can’t wait to feel you inside me, stretching me – ” He rocks his erection into Sherlock’s and hooks a leg around Sherlock’s thigh.

Often, this is all they do, hold each other and rub themselves together under the blankets until their orgasms overtake them both, but John is right – Sherlock wants this very much. Has thought of being inside John, of a deeper ache of satisfaction being fulfilled in the dark heat of John’s body. Just thinking about it makes their frotting together this way doubly pleasurable. “John!” he gasps. “If we’re going to – then we should – ”

“Yes,” John breathes. “I want you. I absolutely want you.” 

He presses a small tube into Sherlock's hands. “How?” Sherlock wants to know. “I mean – ”

“How do you want me?” John asks him. “I want it to be you who decides.”

Sherlock thinks, then, without speaking, rolls them so that he’s lying above John, their faces only inches apart, and starts to move again, his penis rubbing against John’s, both of them trapped between their abdomens and already leaking clear fluid. He can feel John’s breath on his face, the wet sounds of their kisses echoing in the open space between their chests as he extracts some of the tube's contents onto his fingers. Sherlock pulls John’s right leg upward and shifts back, seeking first with his fingers, then angling his erection the right way and pushing, just a little. John is making encouraging sounds, interspersed with heartfelt cursing, and Sherlock smiles. He pushes slowly, driving himself into the private darkness at the very centre of John, the grip of John’s body clamping and clenching around him. He can feel John trying to relax around the protrusion of his penis, but Sherlock waits until he’s fully seated before waiting to give John’s body a chance to adjust. John is panting, fingers digging into Sherlock’s arm and a thin sheen of sweat has broken out on his forehead. “Do you still trust me?” Sherlock asks, his voice vibrating with the effort of holding himself back. 

John swallows and nods, his fingers loosening and caressing Sherlock’s arms instead. “Always,” he says. 

“Even though I go through your things and read your email and – ”

“And re-deposit my rent cheques back into my bank account,” John cuts in, his lip twitching. “Yeah. Even though you do all that.”

Sherlock’s lips tighten a bit: this isn’t a joke. “Even though I completely let you down at Appledore?”

John’s eyes widen and soften. “Oh, Sherlock,” he says. He puts one of his hands on Sherlock’s face. “I know why you’re asking, now, when we’re doing _this_ – but you still don’t need to. You didn’t let me down. You made a mistake. Your brother made the same mistake, and if the two smartest people I know could both make that mistake, I think it was impossible not to have made it. But you fixed it, sort of.”

“But in doing so, I ended up almost taking myself away again,” Sherlock points out, the source of John’s anger that day in Mycroft’s library. “You hated that.”

“You were trying to give me a second chance at the life you thought I wanted,” John insists. 

“The life _you_ thought you wanted, too,” Sherlock states. It’s a bit flat, despite the fact that he’s hard and buried in John and wants him so much it hurts, in every way possible. 

But John shakes his head. “No,” he says. “It was duty. And cowardice. Me running away from my own feelings and doing the thing that I thought I had to do. _This_ is what I want. You. This life. With you. I love you. You know that.”

It’s precisely what Sherlock needed to hear, again. His head drops down and John’s mouth finds his, and they start moving together, joined in multiple places, and for the first time, Sherlock truly feels as though they have becoming _one_ , that he can feel John from the inside, feel every quiver of his pulse, every miniscule movement of his muscles, the rhythm of his nervous system, and John is kissing him with such unrestrained feeling Sherlock thinks it could tear him utterly apart. (He is powerless to do anything but respond in kind, the need to physically share everything that he feels in the same way, from his mouth to John’s, his body to John’s.) He drives himself into John, their mutual need growing, John’s fingers digging hard into his arms and back again, and then he’s coming even as John’s body shudders around him, gasping out his suspended breath as he comes and comes and John’s legs are tight against his sides as his body spasms and releases. 

When it’s done, Sherlock finds himself collapsed in a heap of limp limbs on top of John, his lips in John’s hair, and he feels complete. Neither of them have energy left to speak; John is lazily stroking his back and Sherlock is holding him to himself, his quiescent genitalia lying snugly beside John’s, and the bare intimacy of it is almost painful. If John ever changes his mind – but he _won’t_. Sherlock closes his eyes, glad that John insisted on this happening before tomorrow, and whatever it may bring. 

***

They leave the flat for only the second time in the morning. John insists that they go out for breakfast, leaving unspoken that he plans to speak to Mary at some point afterward, but Sherlock senses, rather than deduces it. He does deduce that John has brought his gun along for breakfast, but neither of them acknowledge it. They go to the same diner that has been their tradition for four years now. John is unsurprisingly quite a stickler for tradition and Sherlock has decided that he likes it. In his current state of euphoria, there is frankly nothing about John that he doesn’t like. He remembers thinking that everything about John was lovable before, and that was before he been intimate with him, discovered the plethora of small (and large) sounds John can make, the way the lines in his face move with different expressions, not to mention all of the expressions Sherlock had never seen on his face before. He finds it hard to believe that John could possibly feel even a fraction of what Sherlock feels for him, but John seems set on proving it. He’d woken before Sherlock (miraculously) and brought a warm flannel to bed, cleaning off Sherlock’s sticky skin everywhere that the previous night had left its marks, finishing with Sherlock’s burgeoning erection in his mouth. Sherlock has never felt so actively, obviously, unmistakeably loved and is trying his best to clumsily show John what he feels in return. 

“So, Thai tonight?” John is saying as they return to the flat, digging in his pocket for his keys. “There’s a new place that I walked by the other day that I think we should try, over on – ”

Sherlock holds up his hand, stopping him, his eyes on the front door to the flat. Someone is inside; the door was forced. His eyes meet John’s and John’s expression changes immediately, the light fading in his eyes to be replaced instantly by firm decision, his mouth setting. (The transformation is spectacular, Sherlock thinks, entranced. Focus.) John draws the gun and goes in first, holding Sherlock back. They both know who it probably is. And as Sherlock is unarmed and has already been shot by her once before, they both know it would be best that John go first. He follows John up the stairs, both of them moving lightly but not trying for silence. The door to the flat is open, and the sight that greets his eyes is actually shocking, even to him. 

Mary is sitting on the sofa, her belly protruding hugely. Seated to her left, a forearm gripped in Mary’s left hand, the cold butt of a silencer pushed into her temple, is Harry Watson. 

John’s eyes lock onto Mary’s. Harry’s meet Sherlock’s in wordless dread. She is dressed for work, Sherlock sees. Mary must have grabbed her on her way out the door. This is a lot for a recovered alcoholic in her mid-forties. Sherlock holds her gaze for a long moment before looking back at John. 

John lifts the gun and aims it at his wife. Sherlock has a passing sensation of relief that his hands and arms are entirely steady. “Mary,” John says, his voice tight but controlled. “Let her go.”

“No.” Mary’s voice is every bit as tight. Her eyes go to Sherlock. “Are you happy?” she spits. “You won, in the end. I should have known it the day you walked into that restaurant.”

She is intensely bitter and despite everything, Sherlock still manages to be startled by the amount of vitriol in her voice. “Mary,” he says slowly, “you don’t need to do this. We can – discuss this – without Harry. Let her go.”

Mary rolls her eyes. “Please, Sherlock,” she says in a tone of heavy patience. “This is a hostage situation. Surely you’ve heard of those.”

“What do you _want_?” John demands. “Usually a hostage means you’re trying to bargain or escape. You came here, so it’s a bargain, then. What do you want? If you think you can – I don’t know, force me to come home this way, I don’t know what sort of relationship you think we could have that way.”

“And that would be the first time you’ve actually admitted that you’ve left me,” Mary says. Her voice is steely. “Were you ever going to tell me, or were you just going to never come back?”

Sherlock glances at John, whose lips twitch in slight self-reproach. “I should have told you sooner,” John admits. “I was going to do it today, in fact. I just – I’m sorry, Mary, but I had to be with Sherlock for a bit first.”

“Oh, I knew exactly where you were,” Mary says, throwing the words at him like daggers. Her eyes cut to Sherlock. “Your brother isn’t the only one who runs surveillance, you know.”

“So you were spying on me,” John says flatly. “That’s lovely. Really lovely. And this is your bargaining chip to make me come home, is it? Nice play. Excellent. Not going to happen. Not in a million years.”

“Wrong, idiot,” Mary says nastily. “This isn’t a bargaining chip. This is revenge.” 

Sherlock feels a stirring of apprehension. “Mary…” he starts, but Mary cuts him off. 

“Shut up, Sherlock. I mean that. Just shut up. This isn’t about you.” Mary’s eyes are still on John. She digs the silencer more firmly into Harry’s temple and Harry winces. 

John is growing angry. “Mary, put down the damned gun!” he says, louder. “That’s my _sister_!”

“Or what?” Mary demands. “Would you actually shoot me?”

“You killed our father,” John says, through clenched teeth. His hands tighten on the gun. “You’re not killing my sister, too.”

Harry’s eyes widen but she’s clearly too afraid to move or speak. Mary’s lips press together. “Did Sherlock figure that out for you, then?” she asks, her mouth barely moving.

“I figured it out for myself!” John retorts. “Maybe you should have shot Sherlock somewhere else if you hadn’t wanted me to see the similarity!”

Mary shrugs. “It’s my trademark.” Her face twists into a sneer. “I knew I never should have believed a word you said to me. You said you hadn’t read the memory stick.” She sounds thoroughly disgusted. 

John raises the gun a little higher. “I didn’t,” he says, his voice venomous. 

Leaving aside the irony of her words, Sherlock turns to John and lowers his voice. “John, the child,” he reminds him warningly. 

“She’s not pregnant,” John says, not lowering his voice. 

Sherlock is startled. “What?”

“It’s true, isn’t it,” John says to Mary, his voice harsh. “You would never have risked bringing a baby into this, two weeks before your due date. Stillborn, then?”

Mary’s eyes go glassy. “The morning after you didn’t come home. That’s when her heart stopped beating.”

“I suppose you think that’s my fault,” John says, jaw clenching, exhalation hard. 

“It _is_. Stillbirth can be caused by trauma,” Mary says. Her voice sounds brittle now. “You left me. You left me, and you killed our child. So this is justice.”

“No,” John says. “You killed my father. You destroyed my family when we were only kids, Harry and me. Because of you, our relationship has never been what it should have been. I might never have joined the army if my father had still been alive, never been shot. Who knows how Harry’s life would have been different, without your influence. You are _finished_ ruining our lives. You’re not going to sit there and shoot my sister.”

Mary glares at him and thumbs off the safety on the handgun with an audible click. “That’s what you think,” she says, her eyes as cold as her voice. “Well: you were wrong about m – ”

A gunshot rings out before Mary can finish the word. Harry drops heavily to the floor. Sherlock looks wildly at John’s gun and sees the smoke, sees Mary slumping backward on the sofa. Harry is curled into herself, hands over her ears, and John is rushing to her. Sherlock feels stunned. John really did it – shot Mary in cold blood. And Sherlock didn’t even do anything – but then, perhaps it wasn’t his case to resolve, for once. As John said, he and his sister have been living with the ramifications of the murder of their father for all their adult lives. He looks over at them. 

Harry is crying noisily and John is apologising and interrupting himself with questions. “Are you all right?” he asks, then, “I’m sorry, Harry, so sorry – you were right all along, and I never wanted to believe you – are you hurt at all?”

“No,” Harry sobs into his shoulders. “But I was so scared – she – she was waiting when I went to leave for work this morning and she put something on my face that knocked me out, and when I woke up I was here, and – ”

“You’re all right now,” John says, his arms around her shoulders. 

“I can’t believe it – did she really kill Dad?”

“Yeah,” John says. “It was her first big hit. She was an assassin.”

Harry opens her eyes and looks past John to Sherlock. “You knew, didn’t you,” she says, getting the crying under control. 

Sherlock nods. He approaches uncertainly and sits down near them on the coffee table. “She almost confessed it in a letter she wrote John that John asked me to read. She had actually shot me in the exact same way that she shot your father, and John noticed the similarity between the two shots.”

“She _shot_ you?” Harry repeats incredulously. She looks at John. “There’s a lot you haven’t told me,” she says. 

“I know.” John releases her and gets up, steps over Harry’s legs and goes to bend over Mary’s body. “She’s dead,” he confirms, his voice even – too even, Sherlock thinks. He goes to the desk and withdraws a stethoscope as Sherlock and Harry watch silently. He hooks it into his ears and presses the opposite end to Mary’s belly. After a moment, he silently straightens up and lets the stethoscope drop to cling around his neck, hands on his hips, his head bowed. 

“Were you right?” Sherlock asks, almost afraid to do so. 

John nods. “It’s possible that she was, too. That is was my fault. Stillbirths _can_ be triggered by trauma.”

“John,” Harry says, sounding slightly annoyed and much more like her usual, acerbic self. “You don’t know that. And if she was shooting people and whatever else, how could you have stayed with her? How could you have married her in the first place?”

“Questions I’ve been asking myself since July,” John says, and Sherlock knows that he’s thinking of when he was shot. He sits down heavily on the coffee table next to Sherlock and Sherlock puts his arms around him regardless of Harry. 

“It wasn’t your fault,” he says, confirming Harry’s words. “You don’t know when the stillbirth occurred.”

Harry pulls herself up and sits down gingerly on the arm of the sofa, a distasteful glance at the body. “So,” she says, nodding at them. “This is on, is it?”

“Yup,” John says, and puts his arms around Sherlock, returning the gesture and laying his head on Sherlock’s shoulder. 

Harry’s eyes meet Sherlock’s. “Took you long enough,” she says, a bit derisively, but when Sherlock smiles, she smiles reluctantly back. “Uh, is anyone going to address the fact that you just shot your wife?” she says to John now. “Not to be blunt, but – there’s a dead body in the room and all.”

Sherlock suddenly decides that he quite likes Harry. “My brother will deal with it,” he tells her. 

“So he will.” Mycroft enters the room then, crossing over to them. 

“How long have you been lurking there?” Sherlock asks. His back is to the door but he doesn’t turn, not wanting to let go of John, but then John loosens his grip and detaches himself. 

“I just arrived, brother mine,” Mycroft says. His eyes fall on the corpse. “Nice work. Whose shot?”

“Mine,” John says, lifting his chin. “You going to arrest me?”

Mycroft snorts. “Hardly. We’ll put it on the same page as the Magnussen shot, shall we?” He looks at the three of them. “May I offer my congratulations on the delayed resolution of your father’s murder?” he asks mildly. “I have all of the details for the official investigation to be resolved. Your father will be exonerated for his work with the Moranis, which you, Ms Watson, suspected from the first, bravo. He was innocent of the nature of his dealings with them – as you, John, would have believed, and was trying to get out when Ms Morstan was hired to dispatch him. It will all be aired.” 

John nods at him. “Thank you, Mycroft.” His voice is quiet but sincere. “I mean that. I appreciate it.” He looks at Harry. “We both do.”

Harry looks slightly wary, not having met Mycroft before. “You’re Sherlock’s brother?” she asks him. 

“That’s the one,” Mycroft says smoothly, not offering to shake hands. “Harriet Watson.”

“It’s Harry,” Harry says, and John laughs. 

Sherlock looks at him and silently marvels that John can laugh now, with his wife and unborn child there on the sofa, but has the wit to realise that laughter is what will heal John, that laughing at inappropriate times and places has always been one of John’s coping mechanisms, and to see him laugh with Harry for the first time since he’s seen them together is good. Really good. 

A flock of Mycroft’s rubber-gloved, soft-footed minions come into the room and carefully, quietly remove Mary’s body while Sherlock makes the three of them tea in the kitchen. Harry is listening attentively as John slowly tells her the whole of their story, from St Bart’s through to today. Sherlock sets the teapot down on the table and sits down beside John and thinks that John was right about nothing changing today, except for the better. This is their family, including Mycroft (who is murmuring importantly into his phone out in the hallway). Sometime soon, they’ll go out to the country and visit their parents, just so that Mummy can redo Christmas dinner. They’ll bring Harry, too, because without their parents, both John and Harry are his family now. Dad will like her, he thinks. She’s as sharp-tongued as Mummy and they already fawned over John like anything at Christmas. Yes, he thinks, picking up the cup of tea John has just poured him and allowing John to put his hand over his own on the table: everything is going to be just fine. 

*

**Author's Note:**

> Just a wee shout-out to my beloved yaycoffee, aka my cheerleader at all times, but especially in this one. Thank you for loving this story so much, my friend! <333


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